Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides has defended corona vaccine procurement in the European Union. “The bottleneck is currently not the number of orders, but the global bottleneck in production capacities,” said Kyriakides on Saturday the German Press Agency in Brussels. This also applies to the German company Biontech. At the same time, Kyriakides promised gradual improvements in vaccine supply.
She responded to criticism that the EU Commission had ordered too little of the vaccine from Biontech and its US partner Pfizer, which is currently the only one with EU approval. Kyriakides assured that negotiations with Biontech had been started early and that the company had been helped with 100 million euros in building up the current production capacities. For this, the Commission had received a commitment for a total of 300 million doses of vaccine.
At the same time, contracts were concluded with other manufacturers. “We agreed in the EU that we shouldn't put everything on one card,” stressed the Commissioner. Otherwise the EU countries might have been left without an effective vaccine.
“The situation will improve step by step,” promised Kyriakides. The Commission is negotiating an additional vaccine from Biontech and is ready to support the expansion of production capacities. Further vaccines are about to be approved by the EU. “For the fact that in autumn 2020 no one could say for sure which vaccine would be successful at all, the EU is in a very good position with its selection of vaccine manufacturers,” said the Commissioner. “And that's what it's all about: Europe is networked and we will get out of this crisis together the fastest. Germany is also very interested in this.”
