Member States’ ambassadors in the EU Council’s Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper) failed to reach agreement on the distribution of the 10 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine to be delivered in advance by Pfizer-BioNTech at their meeting on Wednesday 31 March.
The discussion focused on the 10 million doses that Pfizer-BioNTech was expected to deliver in the third and fourth quarters of 2021 and which have been brought forward to the second quarter of this year (see EUROPE 12679/1).
A negotiation issue
These vaccines have become an issue for the Member States who had bet on AstraZeneca’s vaccine and who are now victims of the Anglo-Swedish company’s delivery delays. At the time, they chose to use this cheaper and more easily storable vaccine and to give up the doses they were entitled to under the allocation mechanism proposed by the European Commission and based on the European population.
According to information circulating on Twitter, the Member States that have given up buying 100% of their Pfizer/BioNTech quota are Latvia (41%), Croatia (46.1%), Bulgaria (46.6%), Slovakia (56.2%), Hungary (84.9%), Austria (91.9%) and Italy (98.2%). The countries that have recovered the quotas of others are Denmark (126.4%), Germany (111.2%), Sweden (107.5%), the Netherlands (104.1%), France (102.7%), Finland (102.6%) and Ireland (101.2%).
Portuguese proposal does not meet with consensus
After being asked by the European Council to draft a proposal, the Portuguese Presidency of the EU Council suggested to the Committee of Permanent Representatives that 7 million doses be distributed according to population and 3 million according to a solidarity principle (see EUROPE 12686/1).
Of these 3 million doses, 2.857 million would be distributed to the five Member States that did not receive 75.5% of Pfizer’s doses based on the pro-rata mechanism, namely Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia. 143,000 doses would be distributed to the Czech Republic to reach 45% of the total population in Europe based on confirmed orders in the second quarter. But this proposal was not supported by Coreper on Wednesday.
A total of 107 million doses delivered in first quarter
The Commission, which maintains its target of vaccinating 70% of the European adult population by the summer, said that by the end of this week, 107 million doses will have been distributed in the EU-27 (of which 29.8 million from AstraZeneca, 67.5 million from BioNTech-Pfizer and 9.8 million from Moderna).
On Tuesday, however, Germany announced its intention to restrict the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine to people over 60 after several cases of blood clots, mainly in young and middle-aged women.
The following day, the European Medicines Agency reconfirmed its position that the benefits of AstraZeneca’s vaccine in preventing Covid-19 outweigh the risks of side effects. “At present, the review has not identified any specific risk factors, such as age, gender or a history of bleeding disorders, for these very rare events. A causal link with the vaccine is not proven, but it is possible and further analysis is ongoing”, the EU agency said in a statement, indicating that it may update its position after the meeting of its Pharmacovigilance Committee (PRAC), scheduled for 6-9 April. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)