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EU leaders were quick to quell growing concern over the slow pace of national vaccination campaigns, promising that everyone who wants to get vaccinated will be.
Meanwhile, the founder of BioNTech, the German company that pioneered the first vaccine approved in Europe, said the EU had been too slow to secure stocks of the jab and warned of potential bottlenecks with supplies amid the growing world demand.
France has been under the most pressure to accelerate its immunization campaign, with only a few hundred doses administered so far, compared to tens of thousands in Germany and nearly a million in the UK. Two shots of the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine are needed for a person to be fully protected.
Opposition doctors and politicians have accused the French government of being overly cautious in its approach, in part to accommodate vaccine skeptics, and ill-prepared for the logistical challenges of the launch. President Emmanuel Macron addressed those concerns head-on in his televised New Year’s speech, saying he would “not let unwarranted slowness take hold of them, for bad reasons.”
“Every Frenchman who wants should be able to get vaccinated,” he added.
After initially deciding to target the elderly in nursing homes and not vaccinating medical and nursing staff until the end of February, France announced that medical staff aged 50 and over would receive the injections starting Monday. France will also open its first urban immunization centers before the beginning of February. “Rest assured that the vaccination campaign will accelerate soon,” said Health Minister Olivier Véran.
Meanwhile, Uğur Şahin, CEO of BioNTech, the German vaccine maker, criticized the EU’s strategy on procuring vaccines, saying it had been too hesitant. “The process in Europe was certainly not as quick and easy as in other countries,” Şahin told Der Spiegel. “Partly because the European Union is not directly authorized and the member states have a voice. In a negotiation. . . it may take time. “
French President Emmanuel Macron says any French who want to should be able to get vaccinated © AFP / Getty
He said the EU had also bet on other producers who could not deliver as quickly as BioNTech and Pfizer had. “I clearly had the impression that ‘we will get enough, and things won’t be too bad, and we have it under control,’” Şahin said.
He also warned of pressure on supplies of the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine. “He doesn’t look so optimistic right now, a gap has arisen, because there are other vaccines that have received approval and we have to fill this gap with our vaccine,” he said. The United States has ordered 200 million doses of the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine, while the EU has secured 300 million.
Not only France is being criticized for its slow deployment. Although the United States has gotten off to a faster start than France or Germany, it fell short of its goal of vaccinating 20 million people by the end of December, with only 2.8 million receiving the vaccine last month.
About 170,000 people in long-term care facilities received the vaccine through Dec. 30, although 2.2 million doses have been distributed to residents, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In the UK, the first country to implement a mass immunization campaign using the BioNTech / Pfizer jab, there have also been setbacks. Nearly 945,000 people have received the vaccine since December 8. But questions have been raised about whether the government can meet its commitment to vaccinate all Britons over 50 and young people whose health is especially vulnerable by late March.
UK ministers hailed the approval this week of the country’s homegrown vaccine, developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, as “a game changer”. However, only 530,000 doses will be available on Monday when vaccines with the new product begin.
This is in part because each batch of doses must be checked for safety and quality before it can be released. Health officials say the limiting factor will be how quickly manufacturers can deliver doses.
UK medical directors warned this week that the availability of Covid-19 vaccines will remain a problem for “several months.” “The vaccine shortage is a reality that cannot be ruled out,” they said.
Also in Germany, officials have been pressured by the slowness of the vaccination campaign. Speaking to reporters earlier this week, Jens Spahn, the health minister, urged people to be patient, saying that supplies of the vaccine were “in short supply around the world.” But he insisted the situation would ease as more vaccines receive regulatory approval.
Lars Klingbeil, secretary general of the Social Democrats, blamed Spahn for the slow start of the deployment. “The minister had months to prepare for the planned start of vaccinations,” he told the Rheinische Post. “And he also received all the powers he needed to do so.”
Additional reporting by Sara Germano, Donato Mancini, and Davide Ghiglione
