That glaring mistake of Europe regarding the purchase of anti-Covid vaccines

A mess, a sensational own goal, a blunder or more simply a mistake in good faith. Call it what you want, but the one committed by Ursula von der Leyen, and therefore from Europe, is a big mistake. Meanwhile why Vaccines for COVID-19secondly, because it refers to the lives of the almost 500 million inhabitants of the European Union. The accusation is very heavy. At a time when maximum speed was needed, that is, when it was advisable to negotiate beforehand with pharmaceutical companies to stock up on vaccines pending their approval, the Commission led by Mrs von der Leyen would have put commercial logic before welfare of the citizen.

Let’s rewind the tape to explain the delicate problem that von der Leyen would have fallen into. In recent months, Brussels has signed agreements with several pharmaceutical companies to acquire the vaccine against the coronavirus. There strategy: diversify the offer as much as possible, coinciding with the five most promising players in the sector. The same ones, to be clear, that promised better results in the short term. And so here are the white fumes for wasting hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines manufactured by various companies (pending new deals): AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, BioNTech / Pfizer, Moderna, and Sanofi-GSK. But be careful, because, according to an investigation by the German weekly Mirror, something would have gone wrong.

The von der Leyen mess

According to the reconstruction offered by Spiegel, the European Commission would have refused to buy up to 340 million doses of the two best and most advanced vaccines. Which? The brand serum BioNTech-Pfizer It’s of Modern. To be clear, we are talking about the same vaccines that Donald Trump has seen fit to buy and that, thanks to the mogul’s decision, are beginning to be inoculated to US citizens. Europe, on the other hand, has been waiting. Or rather: I would have preferred to follow business logic over common sense.

In fact, the Commission would have only thought of dividing the portions of the vaccine cake in such a way as to ensure adequate participation in the deal for all pharmaceutical companies in the race. The French of Healthy however, they had some problems and, a week ago, they were forced to raise the white flag. His vaccine will not receive any approval until at least the fourth quarter of 2021. The fact is that Sano, in the logic of Brussels, must have guaranteed the same actions as BioNTech-Pfizer. Thanks to the French trick, what should not have happened has happened: to comply with a purely commercial rule, Europe has chosen not to buy many promising vaccines (now borrowed from others). Let me be clear: the EU, however, has put the doses of Pfizer and Moderna in its pocket. Except, if he hadn’t wanted to wait for Sano, he could have stockpiled many more to speed up vaccination of Europeans.

A bad decision

Europe’s mistake will cascade over all EU member states. the risk, is the complaint that comes from the German newspaper, is that there may be more deaths and that it may increase the economic cost of Covid. Mouths sewn in the Commission, from which no official comments came out. It is true that some anonymous spokespersons have denied the shadow of any help towards Sano. The accusation, however, is very heavy, and the feeling is that more concrete evidence will be needed to evaporate the idea that someone has put people’s lives at risk to ensure a business advantage to a French company.

In general, it would appear that the EU has bought some vaccines from wrong manufacturerswhile rejecting hundreds of millions of doses of the most promising serums. Calculator in hand, Brussels has ordered 1.3 billion vaccines from six different companies; Each member country will receive a quantity of vaccines proportional to its inhabitants. Italy should receive 13.5%, but the total is misleading and for a very simple reason. What counts would be the doses that would be safe delivery. These doses, to date, would only be those of the BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna vaccine.

The fact is that the EU has only bought 200 million doses of the first company (with option to another 100 million). And it matters little if the consortium had been willing to hand over 500 million: the Commission would have kindly rejected the offer. Identical story with Moderna: 80 million doses orders (with an option for another 80 million) and refused to take 300 million. Europe had already ordered 300 million doses from Sano; therefore, for a kind of Franco-German playing field, Brussels had no intention of buying more doses from a Teutonic company. But no one had considered possible unforeseen events.