As Western governments came under fire for their response to the pandemic last summer, European Union (EU) officials began planning to buy vaccines in the hope of putting the continent at the forefront of the effort.
Instead of 27 member states finding their own way to order from manufacturers, the European Commission (EC) buys vaccines for about 450 million residents on their behalf, lowering costs and ensuring residents of poor and rich countries
Half a year later, vaccine shortages are holding back the EU’s vaccination efforts, leading to the possibility that only a small portion of the public will be vaccinated by the end of this summer.
`We face about 10 more difficult weeks of vaccine shortages ahead,` German Health Minister Jens Spahn told reporters over the weekend.
A Covid-19 vaccination center in Hannover, Germany on February 1.
Israel has vaccinated about 55% of the population, the UK 14%, the US 9.4%, while the EU is only 2.8%.
As Europe’s vaccination effort fails to keep up with the pace of infections, people are starting to lose patience, increasing pressure on governments that have been criticized over the past year for their response to the pandemic.
But many medical experts, pharmaceutical company executives and officials believe that the difficulties the EU faces are of their own making.
The EC appointed Sandra Gallina, a veteran trade official, to negotiate the vaccine purchase.
America’s rapid vaccine campaign Operation Warp Speed, led by a general and pharmaceutical director, has a budget of 18 billion USD and began paying subsidies from March 2020 to vaccine manufacturers, in
`We reject the first-come, first-served concept,` Stella Kyriakides, the EU’s health commissioner, said last week.
Because of the complexity of vaccine production, those who pre-order will be less affected if production problems arise when demand surges, experts say.
However, in terms of cost, the EU has succeeded.
`This is a matter of solidarity,` Gallina told EU lawmakers on February 1, pointing out that poorer member states cannot afford higher-priced vaccines.
But this argument is not enough to convince critics, who say the EU’s approach is shortsighted because the price of shutting down across the continent due to lack of vaccines is much higher.
`They should have spent 20-30 times more and it would still have been much cheaper than the cost of the shutdown,` said Karl Lauterbach, a German professor of epidemiology.
The EU also received a lot of criticism for its large orders with vaccine manufacturers.
On November 17, 2020, the EU continued to order double the amount of the above vaccine from CureVac AG, a German manufacturing company that is pursuing a vaccine using messenger RNA technology but has not had research to prove its effectiveness.
The UK, US and EU licensed the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine last December.
Stefan De Keersmaecker, a spokesman for the EC, said that the contracts were negotiated and signed `in a context of uncertainty… That is why we have to diversify our purchasing portfolio`.
The speed of licensing for use by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is also considered much slower than the US, UK and many other countries.
Nursing home residents prepare to be vaccinated against Covid-19 in Pisa, Italy last week.
Over the past two weeks, while a wave of public anger over vaccine shortages spread across Europe, Pfizer and AstraZeneca both announced supply cuts.
Vaccine developers immediately faced criticism from the EU.
However, EU officials now say they want to avoid legal action and want to focus on vaccine supplies.
Instead of solidarity as the EU initially announced, some member states are now finding ways to speed up vaccination.
In an effort to save the situation, the EC invited Moncef Slaoui, the chief scientist of Operation Warp Speed, as an advisor.
`I want to say that when we are constantly compared with the US, we do not have any inferiority complex. We are stepping up production. I am not jealous of what President Biden is doing because of the reality of the situation in