The European Commission continues to do the math to achieve the goal. “The possibility of reaching 70% of vaccinated must be achieved with these vaccines, this is the plan”, said this Tuesday the director general of Health of the European Commission, Sandra Gallina, in an appearance before the Committee on Budgetary Control of the European Parliament .
The ambitious goal still stands, but to achieve it, 255 million doses will be needed by the summer . At the moment, as of March 16, 69.5 million doses had been distributed throughout the EU, of which 51 million had been inoculated, according to data from the Community Executive.
To achieve this, of course, Gallina believes it is urgent to maintain “vigilance” with the contracts. That message was primarily intended for AstraZeneca. “There is a company that is not meeting expectations,” he warned.
In any case, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, commented days ago that the European Union expects to receive 360 million vaccines in the second quarter of the year , already counting on a reduction in AstraZeneca deliveries from 180 to 70 million announced by the company itself.
The Janssen vaccine is also scheduled to arrive in April. But it is not without controversy either. The EMA announced on Tuesday that there will be delays and that the first doses will not arrive until the end of next month , while the European Commission maintains that it will be in the middle, as planned. In any case, Janssen’s drug is a single dose, which will speed up vaccination.
Regarding the Russian vaccine, Sputnik Gallina said that Brussels is interested in “all vaccines” and that all of them will go through the same process to potentially receive an authorization from the European Medicines Agency, which includes an exhaustive check of all the data of the clinical trials and visits to their facilities.
The senior official also referred to the protests from six member states about an unequal distribution of these drugs , and recalled that the initial proposal of the European Commission was always to deliver the vaccines in prorated quantities based on the population of one of the Twenty seven.
However, after the contracts were concluded, several Member States decided to purchase fewer doses of certain vaccines and more of others , such as Bulgaria with AstraZeneca, a decision that has led them to receive fewer total doses when that laboratory has incurred delays.
“We are in the process of evaluating and organizing inspections. We hope it will be a valuable vaccine to add to the vaccines available to the EU population .” With these words, the European Medicines Agency continues to pave the way for the Russian vaccine to be available to the EU before the end of the year or at the latest in early 2022. The EMA will study the production in situ as part of the preliminary studies that are underway. doing.
