AstraZeneca Agree To Deliver 9 million More Vaccine Doses, Says EU’s Von Der Leyen

AstraZeneca Agree To Deliver 9 million More Vaccine Doses, Says EU’s Von Der Leyen.

EU Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen announced today, Sunday, that AstraZeneca Plc have agreed to deliver 9 million additional COVID-19 vaccine doses in the first quarter, making a total of 40 million doses to Europe. AstraZeneca will start deliveries one week earlier than scheduled, Von Der Leyen said on Twitter. “The company will also expand its manufacturing capacity in Europe,” she said.

AstraZeneca previously said that issues at a plant in Belgium meant deliveries this quarter would be less than half of what was initially planned. The relatively slow start of the EU’s immunization drive led to a messy political dispute last week over European export restrictions on vaccines.

The EU on Friday said that it would ban vaccine exports if drugmakers failed to meet delivery targets. The measure was taken following criticism of a slow rollout of national vaccination programs in the bloc. While Astra’s additional doses mark an improvement, they still fall far short of what the EU was hoping to get in the first quarter, especially as the vaccine was seen as central to many government’s inoculation strategies.

So far, the EU’s 27 governments have administered just 2.6 doses of vaccine per 100 people, far behind the 12.5 doses in the U.K. and 8.8 in the U.S.

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