The European Union (EU) Chief, Ursula von der Leyen has intimated that the bloc’s much-criticized vaccine distribution could be partly blamed on the EU being over-optimistic, over-confident and plainly “late”, as the death toll in the region surpassed 500,000 people.
Addressing the European Parliament, Ms von der Leyen defended the EU’s overall approach of trying to defeat the pandemic with a unified vaccine plan for its 27 nations, but admitted to mistakes in the strategy to quickly obtain sufficient vaccines for its 447 million citizens.
“I cannot even imagine if just a handful of big players, big member states, had rushed to it and everyone else would have been left empty-handed. What would that have meant for our internal market and for the unity of Europe?
“We are still not where we want to be. We were late to authorize. We were too optimistic when it came to massive production and perhaps we were too confident that, what we ordered, would actually be delivered on time. We need to ask ourselves why this was the case and what lessons we can draw from this experience.”
European Union (EU) Chief, Ursula von der Leyen
Ms von der Leyen’s assessment comes as the bloc’s death toll passed a landmark of 500,000 according to figures recorded by the John Hopkins University. The official weekly figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control is expected to confirm the undesirable feat on Thursday, 11th February.
The bloc is still battling the second wave of the pandemic that has kept people in member countries including Portugal, Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Greece under all kinds of lockdown, curfews and restrictions, as authorities race to vaccinate as many people as possible.
Ms von der Leyen maintained her commitment to ensuring that 70% of the EU’s adult population is vaccinated by the end of the summer and blamed big pharmaceutical companies for not keeping vaccine production up with scientific advances.
“Indeed, industry has to match the groundbreaking pace of science. We fully understand that difficulties will arise in the mass production of vaccines. But Europe has invested billions of euros in capacities in advance, and we urged the member states to plan the vaccine rollout. So, now we all need predictability.”
Last month, European Union leaders were embroiled in heated disputes with pharmaceutical companies over shortages in the supply of vaccines. In particular, Ms von der Leyen accused AstraZeneca of “falling short of its contractual commitments” to supply its vaccine to the EU. The firm however argued that, it is only contractually bound to make its “best efforts”.
By the start of this week, EU countries had given first vaccine doses to just under 4% of their populations, compared with 11% for the United States and nearly 17% for Britain. Critics accuse Ms von der Leyen of relying on too narrow a circle of advisers and claim this tendency has proved counterproductive in such a complex crisis.
