'We took things for granted': EU admits poor decision-making led to vaccine rollout delay

The European Commission chief Ursula Von der Leyen asked member states to draw lessons from the mistake made while combating the pandemic and during the rollout of vaccines. Von der Leyen admitted that the bloc was "late" in granting authorisation and "overly optimistic" about mass production and distribution, which led to a major setback in the EU's vaccine rollout plan followed by pharmaceutical companies reporting delays in production. 

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"The fact is that today we are not where we want to be in combating the virus. We were late in granting authorisation. We were too optimistic about mass production. And maybe we also took for granted that the doses ordered would actually arrive on time. We must ask ourselves why, and what lessons we can draw from it," Von der Leyen said in her speech at the European Parliament Plenary on the state of play of the EU's COVID-19 Vaccination Strategy. 

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'Ignored production' 

Von der Leyen said that the lesson that needs to be drawn is the bloc was too concerned about the development of the vaccine that it ignored to prepare for mass production, which led to a slow-down in vaccine distribution across Europe. A major row broke-out between the EU and pharmaceutical companies last month after Pfizer and AstraZeneca reported delays in production due to issues at European sites. The EU accused these companies of diverting their share of doses to other nations, which the companies categorically dismissed.

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The delay caused several countries to make changes in their vaccination programmes. Italy even threatened pharmaceutical firms with legal action. The EU imposed export restrictions on medical products in the wake of delays in order to prevent companies from diverting their share of vaccines to other parties. However, the EU later acknowledged that the delay was genuine and was caused due to issues at its sites. 

"Another lesson to be drawn concerns the mass production of vaccines. We were all highly focused on the development of the vaccine – and rightly so. But overall we have underestimated the difficulties inherent in mass production. That is why we have set up – under the leadership of Thierry Breton (our Internal Market Commissioner) – a task force whose job is to step up the industrial production of vaccines," Von der Leyen said.  

The EC President took the opportunity to highlight that over 17 million people have been vaccinated across Europe since late December 2020, when the bloc approved its first COVID-19 vaccine for mass distribution. Von der Leyen said that a total of 26 million doses of vaccines have been distributed to European nations so far, adding the bloc plans to vaccinate about 70% of the adult population by the end of summer.  

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