Europe’s vaccine roll-out was condemned for being ‘unacceptably slow’ and blamed for ‘prolonging the pandemic’ by the World Health Organisation earlier this month.
‘Vaccines present our best way out of this pandemic. However, the rollout of these vaccines is unacceptably slow’, WHO director for Europe Hans Kluge said.
He added that Europe’s outbreak was ‘more worrying than we have seen in several months’.
Mr Kluge urged leaders to speed up the process by ramping up manufacturing, reducing barriers to administering vaccines and ‘[use] every single vial we have in stock, now’.
But why has the EU’s rollout been so far behind the UK?
A slow start
Britain was the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in November last year, nearly three weeks before the EU.
The EU signed a deal for 300million Pfizer-BioNTech doses by December but were hit by supply-side issues from factories based in Europe early on.
Ursula von der Leyen admitted herself that the bloc was too slow to get out the blocks with giving the company’s jab approval.
In February, she said: ‘We were late to authorise.
‘We were too optimistic when it came to massive production and perhaps too confident that what we ordered would actually be delivered on time.’
Likewise, the EU signed a deal with Moderna but were again hit with slower deliveries, with France and Italy saying they had received fewer than expected.
Flip-flopping on AstraZeneca
Denmark became the latest country in the EU to ban AstraZeneca’s vaccine for all adults on April 14 after EU members have consistently changed their policies on giving the jab because of its links to ultra-rare brain blood clots.
But that hasn’t stopped the the European Commission launching legal proceedings against AstraZeneca after the drugmaker cut vaccine deliveries to the union.
AstraZeneca promised to deliver 100million doses by the end of March but only managed to send 30million.
During the height of the row, the EU threatened to block exports of AztraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines made on the continent to the UK.
French president Macron, who earlier this year described the AstraZeneca jab as only ‘quasi-effective,’ was forced to order his entire population into its third lockdown on Wednesday.
Johnson & Johnson
The EU nearly stumbled again with its roll-out when Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine deliveries were delayed because of fears over blood clots.
European drug regulators on Tuesday ruled the company’s single-shot coronavirus vaccine is safe to use.
But they say it must now carry a warning over the one-in-a-million risk of blood clots when its rollout resumes in the EU.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) made the ruling following a meeting of its safety committee today. It reviewed eight cases of rare clots spotted in the US out of more than seven million people given the jab, mostly in women under 60.
It says the jab’s rollout on the continent should continue as planned. J&J is aiming to get 50million doses to the EU by July and deliveries have already started.
The American drug giant took the decision to ‘proactively delay’ their European roll-out last week after a number of clotting events were reported.
US regulators also suspended the use of the jabs out of ‘an abundance of caution’. They are expected to start using it again from Friday.
Britain has ordered 30million doses but it hasn’t yet been approved by the regulator and deliveries are not expected until summer.
The EMA said the clots found in the tiny amount of J&J-vaccinated people were ‘very similar’ to those involving the AstraZeneca jab.
Val-never
Today, Valneva pulled out of talks with EU bosses who wanted to buy its Covid vaccine because the company’s bosses became frustrated with how long negotiations were taking.
In the latest blow, Valneva has now said it will ‘deprioritise’ order talks with the EU and will instead work with nations on a ‘country by country basis’.
Britain has already secured 100million doses of the firm’s jab, which has passed through Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials. Today the firm announced it would press ahead with the final-stage studies, which could see it being approved and rolled out by the end of the year.
The firm’s boss Mr Lingelbach said: ‘We’ve committed significant time and effort to try to meet the needs of the central procurement process.
‘Despite our recent clinical data, we have not made meaningful progress.
‘We are now concentrating our efforts on EU member states and interested parties outside the EU.’
Ms Von der Leyen has come under fire for the bungled negotiations, with Russian MEP Chirstian Terhes criticising the EU’s ‘wall of red tape and out of touch bureaucracy’.
He told The Sun: ‘Self-determining, fast and nimble national governments win the race every time, as the UK proved with its the vaccine rollout.’
Mr Terhes called for a ‘Bigger Europe but a Better Europe’ to reduce ‘endless bureaucracy’.