BRUSSELS: A senior European Union official said the bloc was slow and unprepared for problems with the launch of the Covid-19 vaccine, but that collective buying was better than competing nations to buy the Covid-19 vaccine. shots.
“We arrived late to authorize,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “We were too optimistic when it came to mass production. And maybe we were too confident that what we asked for would be delivered on time,” he told the European Parliament on Wednesday.
The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, has received intense criticism in recent weeks for the way it has handled contracts on behalf of the 27 EU countries, after several pharmaceutical companies announced production shortages that further delayed a marketing campaign. vaccination already slow in Europe.
The bloc is far behind Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States with only 3.9 vaccinations per 100 inhabitants, in part due to a slow market authorization process and erratic logistics. In addition, producers of the vaccines Oxford-AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have announced delays in deliveries to the EU.
Mrs. Von der Leyen defended the bloc government’s unprecedented decision to centralize shopping, amid calls from some politicians in his native Germany to call for vaccines nationwide.