He tried to deflect attention from his mistakes by launching a brawl with "AstraZeneca".
The European Union pursues a failed policy in securing vaccines against Corona
There are about 105 million people in the European Union more vulnerable than others to the disease ... they have priority vaccination.
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Ursula von said that the European Union will receive about 100 million doses of the vaccine during the first three months of this year.
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The European Union needs 210 million doses of vaccine.
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Next spring will be bleak in the European Union countries, as it will face a shortage of supplies of vaccine made in its countries, which will make member states postpone the reopening (canceling the closure), and affect their economic recovery in the summer.
Instead of taking responsibility, Brussels tried to deflect attention from its mistakes by launching a public spat with the drug company, AstraZeneca, and imposing export controls on vaccine-making companies, which sparked a small diplomatic crisis with the United Kingdom.
Of course, mutual accusations and an embargo on exports are not the alternatives to public and rational health policy.
Rather, the European Union should focus on vaccinating the largest possible number of people at risk, and by using the limited amount of Pfizer vaccines in the best possible way.
The European Union must move collectively to support its most vulnerable member states in the face of the Coronavirus, and move aggressively now to confront the challenges of the Coronavirus, which, if left unchecked, could impede the entire reopening efforts.
At a time when Coronavirus infection rates rose in October 2020, most European Union countries have waited a long time before a response strategy emerged.
By last November, with the intensive care rooms approaching the top of their capacity, the Union countries responded to the spread of the pandemic by imposing a closure that is among the most stringent in the world.
Since that time, cases of infection, hospitalization, and deaths have decreased dramatically, but this policy has remained firm.
This is a great requirement because in the European Union many people are most vulnerable to disease, not because the population of the Union is larger than the populations of the United States and the United Kingdom combined (the population of the European Union countries is 446 million people compared to the United Kingdom and the United States 395 million people), but because The large number of elderly people.
The proportion of people over 65 in the European Union is about 20% compared to 16% in the United States, and there are 105 million people in the European Union who are more vulnerable than others to the disease, because they are health care workers in addition to those over the age of 65 years.
They must be vaccinated as soon as possible before the economy opens, and for this the European Union needs 210 million doses of vaccine.
(Pfizer and Moderna require two doses), and so far the European Union countries have only managed to secure 17 million doses of the vaccine.
The United States managed to secure 42 million doses, while the United Kingdom managed to secure 12 million doses.
To start with, it can be said that the European Union’s failure to secure vaccines is the regulators ’fault.
The European Medicines Agency was delayed until December 21 until it announced its acceptance of the Pfizer vaccine against the Corona virus, three weeks after the United Kingdom announced its acceptance of the same vaccine.
The European Medicines Agency did not approve the Moderna vaccine until the beginning of January of this year, and AstraZeneca until the end of the same month, and when these vaccines got the green light for mass production, the start of the European Union was not good.
During the first weeks of launching vaccines, Germany, Italy and Spain were keeping pace with the United States and the United Kingdom.
But France is behind the rest.
But it was clear that Europe could not continue to keep pace. At the end of January, the vaccine companies that had won European Union approval had announced a delay in submitting applications.
Pfizer said it could make up for the delay at the end of February.
But AstraZeneca will only deliver 40 million doses of the vaccine by March 31, half the amount originally agreed.
And now, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said that she expects that the European Union will receive about 100 million doses in the first three months of 2021, and that “delays can happen again and again.” In other words, the issue is not only problems in getting vaccines. Rather, there is a deep structural error in the strategy to bring vaccines to the European Union.
Brussels wants to blame the delay on vaccine manufacturers.
But in fact the problem is largely the fault of the European Commission.
The two best vaccine manufacturers, whose performance was the best in clinical trials and the best in preparing to update their vaccines to target the new strains, are "Pfizer and Moderna". Therefore, these two companies will send at most about 430 million vaccine doses to the European Union before September 2021, and this amount is sufficient for about Half of the adult population is in the European Union.
The European Commission has contracts to buy vaccines with other companies that manufacture the vaccine, including "Novavax", "Curvac", "Johnson & Johnson" and "Sanofi".
But Brussels cannot get these vaccines accepted and distributed quickly.
Johnson & Johnson announced its data on January 29, but given that the effectiveness of the vaccine is 66%, which is the lowest that was announced by a Western vaccine manufacturer, this means that regulators in the European Union will not accept the use of this vaccine in European Union due to its high risk.
The European Medicines Agency approved AstraZeneca for use in adults, but the German government refused to use it for those over 65, and the European government warns against its use in people over 55.
Other EU member states, such as Poland, follow this warning against the use of AstraZeneca.
That is why the J&J vaccine is unlikely to be accepted for widespread use.
As for the other companies that will supply the European Union with vaccines, their vaccine is unlikely to be accepted by the European Medicines Agency.
CureVac is still in clinical trials.
And "Sanofi" is still too early to agree to transfer part of the company's factories to manufacture more Pfizer vaccines.
However, more vaccines are unlikely to be distributed until at least next summer.
Novavax reported the results of the third phase of the trials at the end of January.
In addition, although Novavax announced that clinical trials showed that the effectiveness of its vaccine on the original virus is 90%, this percentage becomes 60% for the virus strain that appeared in South Africa.
Even if the European Union moves quickly to secure doses of Novavax in the coming weeks, it will still depend to a large extent on the supplies of "Pfizer" and "Moderna".
The resulting economic outlook remains summed up in one word: poor.
The two largest economies in the European Union have the most cautious policy regarding vaccination, which are Italy and Germany. As we have indicated, they are limited to using the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to vaccinate the population most vulnerable to Corona infection.
France needs to use highly effective vaccines because the levels of use of the vaccine will be low, as 60% of the French say that they will not take the Corona vaccine, according to the latest opinion poll conducted by Ipsos polls company.
If this number of French persists in their position, it will be difficult for France to achieve herd immunity.
The longer the vaccine is used in the European Union, the greater the bad risks from an outbreak.
And if governments lift the closure imposed on their people or the population stops respecting this closure, before the vaccine spreads significantly, then a new wave of cases may spread again, which facilitates the emergence of vaccine-resistant strains.
The only solution available
The only solution available to the European Union is to work hard, and to move forward towards all European fronts.
The next package of fiscal stimulus and the European Central Bank’s asset purchase program will help support the most affected member states in their fiscal capacity, but if the shutdown continues for a longer period in the spring, the EU will need additional financial resources for more emergency support.
The European Union should also increase work on testing the virus's genetic systems to track new strains and slow their spread, in addition to making intensive efforts to eliminate feelings of rejection of vaccines.
It must be recognized that the woes caused by the Coronavirus are the result of failed policies and not the fault of the vaccine manufacturers.
- Ike Freeman, Aleetria Ardesseno: two writers for Foreign Policy.
The longer the vaccine is used in the European Union, the greater the bad risks from an outbreak. And if governments lift the closure imposed on their people or the population stops respecting this closure, before the vaccine spreads significantly, then a new wave of cases may spread again, which facilitates the emergence of vaccine-resistant strains.
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