The European Commission says that Member States are on track to meet the EU’s commitments to vaccinate at least 80% of elderly people and carers by the end of March (see EUROPE 12639/1).
“A sufficient quantity of doses has been delivered to cover these vaccination needs”, a spokesperson for the institution said, on Tuesday 30 March, saying that it would now be necessary to verify that the vaccinations had actually been carried out.
The EU is currently facing production and delivery delays from AstraZeneca. At the time of writing, the Permanent Representatives of the Member States were still discussing a possible mechanism for correcting the backlog of doses delivered by Pfizer-BioNTech (see EUROPE 12686/1).
Austria, which is in great demand of such a mechanism, also indicated on Tuesday that it had received a proposal from Russia to supply one million doses of its anti-Covid vaccine, Sputnik V (see EUROPE 12671/8 ). The vaccine, which is under continuous evaluation by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), is not part of the European Commission’s portfolio of vaccines, nor is it part of the Commission’s ongoing negotiations for future purchases by Member States, a Commission spokesperson confirmed. The spokesperson recalled that Member States have the possibility to grant an emergency national authorisation to a vaccine not licenced by the EMA. In this case, however, there are liability and responsibility consequences. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)