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EU governments face mounting pressure to accelerate vaccination rates against Covid-19 as slow progress unleashes a bitter political blame game.
The German government said it was considering delaying the administration of a second dose of the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine so that supplies go further, emulating a similar move from the UK last week.
The move came amid mounting criticism of Health Minister Jens Spahn, who has been accused of failing to secure sufficient supplies of vaccines and ensuring a speedy start to the vaccination campaign.
Mr Spahn has been criticized for delegating responsibility for securing vaccine stocks to the European Commission. But the government defended that approach on Monday, and spokesman Steffen Seibert said it “was and is the right path.”
The commission also responded to criticism of its vaccine strategy, which was agreed to by member states in June. “In fact, we have signed contracts that would allow member states to have access to 2 billion doses, largely enough to vaccinate the entire EU population,” said Eric Mamer, chief spokesman for the commission.
He said it was “quite surprising” that some people asked why not all doses were immediately available, pointing to anticipated manufacturing limitations, which meant that EU distribution would gradually build up to a “big delivery” in April.
“I don’t think the problem is really the number of vaccines,” he told reporters in Brussels. “It’s the fact that we are at the beginning of a launch.”
So far inoculation rates in the EU lag far behind other countries such as the UK and the US Great Britain has vaccinated more than 1 million people, while Germany has only given around 265,000 injections of the 1.3 million it has received so far.
One reason for the low rates is that the EU medical regulator gave its approval to the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine later than the UK, Israeli and US authorities, although the EU body is ready. to give the green light to a second one, made by Moderna from the United States, in the next few days. The EU has signed contracts with a total of six vaccine producers and confirmed on Monday that it was in talks with Pfizer and BioNTech to secure more doses of its vaccine, beyond the 300 million injections covered by the current contract.
EU authorities are also looking for solutions to help their supplies go further. The German Health Ministry is seeking the opinion of an independent vaccination commission on whether to increase the number of doses that can be drawn from a vial of BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine from five to six, as well as whether to delay a second injection further. the current maximum limit of 42 days. The Danish Health Authority will allow a wait of up to six weeks before administering a second dose, according to its director, Soren Brostrom.
A box of BioNTech / Pfizer vaccines arrives in Madrid. Last week, the city used only about 6% of the first 49,000 doses it received © Paul White / AP
A vaccination center in Würzburg: The German government said it was considering a delay in administering a second dose of the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine © Alex Kraus / Bloomberg
One problem that has emerged is the apparent inability of some EU member states to distribute the vaccine doses they already have, with marked regional variations in inoculation rates.
“Our capacity to administer and distribute the vaccine is not yet in place across Europe; certainly, we are seeing considerable diversity in performance, ”said Flemming Konradsen, professor in the department of public health at the University of Copenhagen.
Spain is a country that has experienced great regional changes. Madrid, for example, used only about 6 percent of the first 49,000 doses of the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine it received last week. Antonio Zapatero, regional leader of the Covid-19 response, blamed the slow start on a one-day delay in the first delivery of vaccines, as well as requests from nursing homes to wait until after the New Year holidays. .
For its part, Catalonia only used about 8,000 of the 60,000 doses it received. But other regions, such as Asturias and Galicia, have already consumed more than half of their doses. Overall, Spain has deployed only about 18 percent of its punches.
In Italy, Giorgia Meloni, leader of the right-wing Brothers of Italy party, launched an online petition to gain public support for a motion of no confidence against Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, in part due to his government’s management of the vaccine launch.
“We were concerned about the low number of doses that had reached Italy, but the inability to administer them on time is even more serious,” said Licia Ronzulli, senator of the Brothers of Italy.
Domenico Arcuri, Italy’s emergency commissioner for pandemic response, has said his country ranks second in Europe only after Germany for the number of vaccinated so far. So far 118,000 people have been vaccinated as of Sunday night.
Reporting by Guy Chazan in Berlin, Michael Peel and Sam Fleming in Brussels, Ian Mount in Madrid and Miles Johnson in Rome
