AstraZeneca’s delivery to E.U. has fallen short of tens of millions of doses.
The European Union (E.U.) today, Monday, i.e., April 26, 2021 officially took the British-Swedish drug maker, AstraZeneca to court for repeatedly under-delivering Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine to the bloc.
As per the agreement, the E.U. had ordered 300 million initial doses of the vaccine, with an option of having 100 million extra doses. The drugmaker’s delivery to E.U. has fallen short of tens of millions of doses.
AstraZeneca has said it can only deliver 1/3rd of the total doses by end of June 2021.What has irked the E.U. most is the fact that AstraZeneca is fulfilling its delivery commitments to the United Kingdom (U.K.) and not the bloc. The E.U. had earlier asked AstraZeneca to fulfill its E.U. commitment by delivering vaccines manufactured in U.K.
Speaking on the occasion, the Spokesperson for Health for European Commission – Stefan De Keersmaecker, said, “Some terms of the contract have not been respected, and the company has not been in a position to come up with a reliable strategy to ensure timely delivery of doses.”
He further added, “What matters to us in this case, is that we want to make sure that there is a speedy delivery of a sufficient number of doses that European citizens are entitled to, and which have been promised on the basis of the contract.”
Expressing concern over the development, AstraZeneca said that its regrets European commission has to take the legal route. It also said it will defend itself against the charges and that the case is without merit.
A statement from AstraZeneca read, “Following an unprecedented year of scientific discovery, very complex negotiations, and manufacturing challenges, our company is about to deliver almost 50m doses to European countries by the end of April, in line with our forecast.”
The statement further read, “AstraZeneca has fully complied with the Advance Purchase Agreement with the European Commission and will strongly defend itself in court. We believe any litigation is without merit and we welcome this opportunity to resolve this dispute as soon as possible.”
At the time of signing of the contract, the AstraZeneca had committed to try its best to deliver 180 million vaccine doses to the bloc in the second quarter of this year, making up a total of 300 million in the period from December 2020 to June 2021.
Initially, Germany, France and Hungary were not keen on suing the company as they thought that the move will not speed-up deliveries but later, they agreed to taking the company to court.
The announcement came after the President of European Commission – Ursula von der Leyen earlier said that E.U. will never do business with AstraZeneca. She said that E.U. would only deal with Pfizer and Moderna for remaining COVID-19 vaccines.
AstraZeneca claimed it had fully complied with the supply agreement, under which it committed to making best reasonable efforts to meet the delivery goals. It said that despite several supply issues, it is trying its best to deliver more doses to E.U. It stated that while they are making progress addressing the technical challenges, but the production cycle of a vaccine is very long, which means these improvements take time to result in increased finished vaccine doses.
