Vaccination: AstraZeneca will deliver only 4.6 million doses to France by the end of March (Illustration) -

David Talukdar // SIPA

A delay in delivery had been announced.

AstraZeneca will deliver 4.6 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine to France by the end of March, half less than expected, the Ministry of Health said on Tuesday.

Already, AstraZeneca's "problems in clinical trials" in the fall had led to a sharp drop in forecasts, the ministry said: instead of the 17.5 million doses from December to March provided for in the initial contract, Paris was only expecting 9 million in February and March.

Future vaccine authorization

If the authorization of the European Medicines Agency is still hoped for at the end of January - Friday except for a new rebound - the "drop in yield" in a factory of the pharmaceutical group will therefore again reduce this figure by half.

"It is a great disappointment," said the Ministry of Health, which added that the government "will deal with the European Union to seek explanations from AstraZeneca".

In Brussels, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the boss of the British laboratory on Monday to "honor the contracts and conditions provided for in the pre-order agreement".

AstraZeneca does "not take vaccines from Europeans to sell them elsewhere"

"The whole object of (these) contracts was to finance the start-up of production upstream", recalls the French ministry, which considers that "the company should have started production as soon as it could" and "put in stock of vaccines to begin delivering them to us once (authorization) has been received ”.

The British pharmaceutical company in question does not "certainly take vaccines from Europeans to sell them elsewhere at a profit", defended its CEO Pascal Soriot.

"It would make no sense," said the French leader in an interview published Tuesday on the site of the daily

Le Figaro

, recalling that the laboratory, partner with the University of Oxford, is committed not to carry out any profits from the sale of vaccines during the pandemic.

The boss of AstraZeneca also says that the laboratory is working "with the University of Oxford on a vaccine that will target" the South African variant of Covid-19.

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