‘Solidarity Is Failing’: E.U. and U.K. Fight Over
Scarce Vaccines
As vaccine production falls behind schedule, and the
European Union lags in inoculating people, Brussels and London are lobbing
threats and accusations at each other.
Benjamin
MuellerMatina Stevis-Gridneff
By Benjamin
Mueller and Matina Stevis-Gridneff
Jan. 27,
2021, 12:15 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/world/europe/EU-UK-vaccine-fight.html
LONDON —
The vaccine wars have come to Europe.
For months
now, wealthy countries have been clearing the world’s shelves of coronavirus
vaccines, leaving poorer nations with little hope of exiting the pandemic in
2021. But a fresh skirmish this week has pitted the rich against the rich —
Britain versus the European Union — in the scramble for vials, opening a new
and unabashedly nationalist competition that could poison relations and set
back collective efforts to end the pandemic.
The
European Union, stung by its slow progress on vaccinations, threatened this
week to tighten rules on the shipment of Belgian-made shots to Britain.
British
lawmakers, in turn, have accused their European counterparts of a blackmail
campaign that could embitter relations for a generation.
And poorer
countries, already at the back of the line for vaccines, could face even longer
waits if the intense squabbling among rich countries drives up prices for
everyone else.
The feuding
in Europe holds echoes of the dark, early days of the pandemic, when scores of
countries banned or restricted the export of protective equipment and medical
devices. Nearly a year later, far from abating, that spirit of protectionism
has been exacerbated: Not only are vaccine supplies too scarce for many poorer
countries to begin inoculations, but wealthy countries cannot figure out how to
share the available doses among themselves.
“Science is
succeeding, and solidarity is failing,” said Robert Yates, the director of the
global health program at Chatham House, the London-based policy institute. “The
world’s political leaders are letting down the scientists, and everyone else.”
At the core
of the problem are production delays at separate factories in Belgium that make
the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and the one developed by AstraZeneca and the
University of Oxford. With a new and more contagious coronavirus variant
fueling a surge of cases in several European countries, those delays have
undermined efforts to get shots into millions of people’s arms, ratcheting up
the global competition for doses.
But the
notoriously tricky manufacturing of vaccines is only part of the problem.
Public health experts say the entire global system of buying doses, pitting one
country against another with little regard for equity, is unfit to the task of
ending a pandemic that respects no borders.
For the
European Union, problems with its vaccination campaigns have reinforced
criticism of the bloc’s occasionally unwieldy, slow bureaucracy. Unable to
speed up vaccine makers, the bloc’s leaders have instead resorted to threats
about the export process, a sign of the severe pressure facing them as the European
Union falls far behind Britain and the United States, which made advanced
purchases of vaccines earlier, and have been quicker to authorize the shots and
get people inoculated.
“The
prestige of the European Union is founded on a perception of competence,
particularly when you go to different peripheries of the continent, where
people think that Brussels is going to be more competent than the national
authorities,” said Bruno Maçães, an author and a former politician in Portugal.
“You can see a sense of desperation in the last couple days.”
Many
European countries, rich and poor, have been hoping that the arrival of the
AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine would hasten the pace of vaccinations, owing to its
lower price and simpler storage requirements, compared to those from Pfizer and
Moderna. The bloc’s drug regulators are expected to authorize the vaccine on
Friday, a month after Britain did.
But
AstraZeneca told the European Union at a teleconference last week that it was
going to slash its scheduled deliveries to 31 million doses by the end of
March, less than half of the 80 million doses the bloc had been expecting.
E.U.
officials were aghast. The news came on top of an announcement from Pfizer that
it had to slow its own vaccine deliveries so that it could upgrade its Belgian
factory.
With member
states incensed, the European Commission reacted on Monday by saying that all
coronavirus vaccines made within the bloc would require special paperwork to be
shipped elsewhere. That put Britain’s supply of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines at
risk: Unlike its supply of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is being produced in
British plants, its shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine come entirely from
a factory in Puurs, Belgium.
European
lawmakers justified the move by saying it would allow them to monitor how
companies were distributing vaccines, and hold them accountable.
“This isn’t
about E.U. first,” said the German health minister, Jens Spahn, in a televised
interview Tuesday, “but Europe’s fair share.”
European
officials have implied that AstraZeneca, headquartered in Britain, sent
vaccines to Britain that were meant for the continent instead. They said
suggestions by AstraZeneca that the company had been hit by manufacturing
problems at its Belgian factory could not explain the steep drop in delivery
volume.
AstraZeneca,
for its part, has said that Britain’s supply of vaccines has come from the
country’s own plants, and not Europe. “We have not diverted any supply from the
Europe supply chain to countries outside the E.U.,” a company spokesman said on
Tuesday.
Relations
between Britain and the European Union were already testy after more than four
years of wrangling over Brexit, which was finalized just weeks ago, and British
lawmakers reacted with fury to being blamed for the bloc’s vaccine problems.
David Jones, a Conservative lawmaker, told a British newspaper that “this looks
awfully like blackmail,” saying it “shows why we were right to leave the E.U.”
Analysts
said the spat was indicative of rising tensions over the large lead Britain has
in inoculation, having given vaccines to 10 percent of its people so far,
compared to about 2 percent in the European Union. Britain was the first
country to authorize a fully tested coronavirus vaccine, and the government of
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has trumpeted its successes.
“I think
there are elements within the government, and within the pro-Brexit community,
who are actually quite relishing this,” said Mr. Yates of Chatham House. “In
this case, we are seeing perhaps a bit of retaliation now from our European
neighbors who are fed up with this.”
The
conflict between the European Union and AstraZeneca took a particularly
damaging turn on Monday night when two German newspapers published claims —
errantly, it turned out — that the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine was completely
ineffective in older people.
While low
numbers of older people were enrolled in AstraZeneca’s completed clinical
trials, making it difficult to assess the vaccine’s efficacy in that group, the
newspaper claims were false, the German health ministry later said. But they
played into the anger among some Germans about the slow vaccine rollout,
particularly given that Britain has been inoculating people since Dec. 8 with
the vaccine that was originally developed by BioNTech, a German company.
“How
Germany Became a Vaccination Snail,” read a headline in the mass-circulation
Bild on Tuesday, over an article detailing the country’s missteps that have led
it to fall behind in the race to vaccinate its population.
Concerns
about the paucity of data in older people could further limit the use of the
AstraZeneca shot: European regulators are considering authorizing it only for
people under 65 years old, two E.U. officials said.
For
AstraZeneca, which is being relied upon by much of the world to supply
affordable and easy-to-store shots, the production delays in Europe have been a
sign of snags in its ambitious plans, analysts said. While other vaccine
makers, like Pfizer, are relying on only a few facilities, AstraZeneca has
contracted its manufacturing to plants all over the world.
The
European Commission is now demanding that AstraZeneca open up its production
plans to scrutiny. In an internal document seen by The New York Times, the
commission said that the European Union wants to know “which factory produced
what and when,” a question that the bloc believes its contract entitles it to
have answered.
Britain
reached an agreement with AstraZeneca last May to buy tens of millions of doses
of the vaccine, when it was still in clinical trials — three months before the
European Union arranged its purchases.
Even so,
the bloc made the vaccine a centerpiece of its plans, ordering 300 million
doses that it planned to distribute to member states based on population size.
Several member states eschewed parts of their shares of the Pfizer and Moderna
vaccines, which are more expensive and harder to store and administer, to plan
their strategies around AstraZeneca deliveries.
To ensure
it would not be at a disadvantage to other countries in securing orders,
European Union officials said that they also agreed in mid-October to pay more
than 300 million euros ($360 million) so that AstraZeneca could scale up
production capacity.
With
deliveries now falling far short, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the
European Commission, on Tuesday demanded a return on the bloc’s investments.
“The
companies must deliver,” she said. “They must honor their obligations.”
But Pascal
Soriot, the chief executive of AstraZeneca, said in an interview with the
Italian newspaper La Repubblica that his company had never promised to deliver
the vaccine to the bloc as fast as it did to Britain.
“Europe at
the time wanted to be supplied more or less at the same time as the U.K., even
though the contract was signed three months later,” he said. “So we said, ‘OK,
we’re going to do our best, we’re going to try, but we cannot commit
contractually.’”
Benjamin
Mueller reported from London, and Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Brussels. Monika
Pronczuk contributed reporting from Brussels, and Melissa Eddy from Berlin.
Benjamin
Mueller is a United Kingdom correspondent for The New York Times. Before that,
he had been a police and law enforcement reporter on the Metro desk since 2014.
@benjmueller
Matina
Stevis-Gridneff is the Brussels correspondent for The New York Times, covering
the European Union. She joined The Times after covering East Africa for The
Wall Street Journal for five years. @MatinaStevis
AstraZeneca CEO: EU vaccine contract is ‘not a
commitment’
‘Our commitment’ says Pascal Soriot, is to make ‘our
best effort.’
BY HELEN
COLLIS AND DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
January 27,
2021 6:30 am
AstraZeneca’s
chief has defended the company’s shock admission that the EU’s first
coronavirus vaccine deliveries will fall far short of expectations, claiming
the number that will be delivered is “not so bad” and his company only
committed to meet demand to its “best effort."
In setting
out the company’s position, Pascal Soriot, the chief executive of the
Anglo-Swedish firm, told Italy's la Repubblica newspaper in an interview
published Tuesday that the EU’s deliveries were in large part delayed because
the bloc was late signing a contract for the vaccine — three months behind the
U.K. — and therefore EU manufacturing facilities were playing catch-up in
ironing out glitches.
He also
denied allegations that the company had been selling its vaccines beyond the EU
to make a quick buck. Soriot said the company was not making a profit on the
vaccine anywhere, with prices ranging between $3 and $4 a dose globally,
dependent upon local supply chain costs.
Some
European leaders had reacted with outrage to Friday’s news that AstraZeneca’s
scheduled COVID-19 vaccine supplies to the EU would be significantly cut.
European Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said Monday it was “not
acceptable,” while Italy and Latvia said they want to sue the company.
Amid
suspicions the pharma giant was selling jabs that ought to have been contracted
to the EU elsewhere for a higher price, Kyriakides announced new export rules
that would require companies to notify Brussels of any vaccines they intend to
sell outside of the bloc. The Commission also wants to know exact manufacturing
yields at each facility and where these doses are destined.
Soriot said
the EU will receive 3 million doses once the vaccine is approved by the
European Medicines Agency, and 17 million total by February. He downplayed the
shortfall in orders, saying stress was causing EU leaders to react badly.
"Governments
are under pressure," Soriot said. "Everybody is getting kind of a
bit, you know, aggravated or emotional."
He said
AstraZeneca will be making 100 million doses globally a month from February,
noting “Europe is getting 17 percent of the global production … for a
population that is 5 percent of the world population.”
The issues
lie with difficulties in manufacturing high yields of the active ingredient, or
drug substance, which are made at sites in the Netherlands and Belgium, he
said. Once the active ingredient is ready, it’s shipped to Italy and Germany
where it is diluted and put into vials — and there are “zero problems” with the
latter process, Soriot said.
Water-tight
contract
Reports of
legal action against the company — potentially from Italy, as well as calls for
a European-level lawsuit — for not meeting its contracted deliveries, didn't
appear to faze Soriot, with the CEO insisting he was confident in the wording
of the company's agreement.
The EU
“contract is very clear: Our commitment is, I am quoting, ‘our best effort,’”
he said. It was drawn up this way because AstraZeneca and its partner Oxford
University had already signed a deal with the U.K. government for 100 million
doses, and was committed to delivering them, while the EU deal for 400 million
doses was signed three months later, with the bloc wanting them to be shipped
concurrently.
“We said,
‘OK, we're going to do our best, we’re going to try, but we cannot commit
contractually because we are three months behind U.K.,'” he said, adding the
company knew it was a “super stretch goal."
At a news
conference Tuesday, the European Commission’s chief spokesman, Eric Mamer,
noted that AstraZeneca was fulfilling orders to other customers — a clear
reference to the U.K., where the vaccine has been deployed for several weeks —
and said the EU saw no reason why it should not receive its expected supply
once the vaccine is formally approved, as is expected later this week.
“We see
that doses are being delivered elsewhere and we know that we have signed an
agreement with AstraZeneca in August, that member states placed their orders, I
believe around October, and that we are now at the end of January,” he said.
“Therefore, we believe that the doses should be basically available to be
delivered if and when the conditional marketing authorization is recommended by
the European Medicines Agency.”
But Soriot
pointed out that the British agreement stipulates that supply coming out of the
U.K. would go to the U.K. first. The EU agreement allows use of the U.K.
manufacturing sites, “but only later,” Soriot said, once Britain reaches a
“sufficient number of vaccinations.”
EU's
'really bad luck'
The British
deal, facilitated by Oxford University's early talks with the U.K. government,
allowed manufacturing to be expanded and fine-tuned early in the U.K.,
overcoming hurdles in scaling up a complex biological process, Soriot said,
before the vaccine was approved.
The later
deal with the EU meant all these processes were three months behind. The
company had to train partners across Europe on how to manufacture the vaccine,
and “some people are new to this process … They don't know how to make the
vaccine and they're not as efficient as others," he said.
For this
reason, the most-efficient U.K. facility yields three times the vaccine doses
compared with the less-efficient factories elsewhere, and facilities with the
lowest yields are those supplying the EU, according to Soriot.
"Unfortunately,
it's really bad luck,” he said. “There’s nothing mysterious about it.”
In response
to the remarks by Soriot, the European Commission’s Mamer reiterated the EU’s
insistence that AstraZeneca fulfill its contractual obligations and better
explain why it would not be able to deliver the promised quantities of vaccine.
Earlier on Tuesday, at the Commission’s daily news conference, Mamer said he
had been unable to answer reporters’ many questions about what had gone wrong
because AstraZeneca had not provided sufficient explanation for the expected
production shortfall.
EU
officials have said previously that the bloc’s purchase agreements with the
company were not tied to any particular production facility and that they
sought out agreements with companies with a demonstrated capacity for the
large-scale manufacturing required to make vast quantities of vaccine.
“When we
signed the agreement, it was on the basis that these companies had production
capacity, and we expected that there is flexibility,” Mamer said Tuesday night.
“We are looking forward to continue the conversation during the steering board
meeting tomorrow evening.”
Meanwhile,
the U.K.’s approach to delay the second jab until 12 weeks to enable more
people to get the first was “absolutely the right way to go, at least for our
vaccine,” Soriot said. “You get a better efficiency if you get the second dose
later than earlier." Denmark and the Netherlands are now also delaying
second doses by six weeks.
Soriot
denied that AstraZeneca was selling vaccines outside of the EU to make more
money, underlining that the company was contractually obliged with Oxford
University to make no profit. “We're certainly not taking vaccines away from
the Europeans to sell it somewhere else at the profit,” he said. “It would not
make sense.”
And Soriot
said he was baffled as to why German media reported the vaccine has just 8
percent efficacy in over 65s. “It’s incorrect,” he said, adding: “Lots of very
smart people” working for regulators in countries that have approved the
vaccine accepted its efficacy in people 18 years old and above.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário