EU pressuring AstraZeneca for more vaccine doses

The European Union (EU) is pressuring the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, to deliver more coronavirus vaccine doses to its 27 nations and to stick to its initial promises once the jab gets EU approval.

The EU, with the economic and political clout of the biggest trading bloc in the world, is lagging badly behind countries like Israel and the UK in the rollout of vaccines for its most vulnerable population and health care workers.

It spurred the EU's executive Commission into swift action on Monday, with President Ursula von der Leyen's phone call to AstraZeneca's CEO Pascal Soriot.

She made it clear that she expects AstraZeneca to deliver on the contractual arrangements foreseen in the advance purchasing agreement," said her spokesman Eric Mamer.

"She reminded Mr Soriot that the EU has invested significant amounts in the company up front precisely to ensure that production is ramped up even before the conditional market authorization is delivered by the European Medicines Agency," Mamer said at a news briefing in Brussels.

The delays will be make it harder to meet early targets in the EU's planned goals of vaccinating 70% of the adult population by late summer.

The EU has sealed six vaccine contracts for more than 2 billion doses, but only the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines have been approved for use so far.

The European Medicines Agency is scheduled to review the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine on Friday and its approval is hotly anticipated.

The AstraZeneca vaccine is already being used in Britain and Canada, and has been approved by half a dozen countries, including India and Pakistan.

AstraZeneca's announcement that it will deliver fewer vaccines to the EU early on has only increased pressure on the 27-nation bloc, especially since Pfizer-BioNTech, the first vaccine to get EU approval, has also failed to keep up with the promised vaccine deliveries to the EU last week.