The EU fails to meet all the vaccination targets that it had set for the first quarter

Several people are vaccinated against covid this Wednesday at the Santander Congress and Exhibition Palace.Juan Manuel Serrano Arce / Europa Press

The European Union has closed the first quarter of the vaccination campaigns without meeting a single one of the objectives that it had set.

Brussels hoped to reach March 31, having vaccinated 80% of the population over 80 years of age and 80% of health personnel.

In both cases it has fallen far short of the goal, with only 27% of the older population and less than half of the health workers vaccinated.

The EU has also not been able to meet the planned dose distribution schedule, although in this case it was due to supply failures from AstraZeneca, which delivered 70 million fewer doses than promised.

Brussels hopes to relaunch the campaigns this April and reach the target of 70% of the vaccinated adult population by the end of the summer.

Data from the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) show that only 27% of the population over 80 have received the two doses necessary to achieve immunity.

According to the ECDC, only four of the 27 EU partners have exceeded the 80% threshold (Finland, Ireland, Malta and Sweden) and another two (Denmark and Portugal) are on the verge of doing so.

In Spain, which has not provided data to the ECDC, only a third of the population over 80 years of age have received both doses and 70% have received at least one.

Regarding the health sector, the ECDC has little data because only 13 States have sent it information.

These data indicate that 47% of health personnel have already been vaccinated and around 61% have received the first dose.

The slow start of vaccination campaigns has raised concerns in most Member States, especially in view of the accelerated pace in other parts of the planet, in particular in the USA and the United Kingdom, where 50% and the 7.8% of the population, respectively, have already received both doses of the vaccine.

In the EU, this figure remains at around 6% at the end of the first quarter.

"By the end of this week, 107 million doses will have reached the Member States," announced this Thursday the deputy spokesperson for the European Commission, Dana Spinant.

The figure is far from the more than 160 million doses initially planned despite the fact that BioNTech and Moderna, two of the pharmaceutical companies hired by the Commission, have fulfilled the promised deliveries, with 67.5 and 9.8 million respectively.

AstraZeneca, on the other hand, has delivered 29.7 million, far from the almost 100 million committed.

The lack of dose has joined the hesitation of some national authorities about the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which in several countries has been restricted to certain age groups despite the fact that the European Medicines Agency considers it safe for all ages .

The combination of problems around the Anglo-Swedish laboratory has finally left the EU very far from the objectives it had set at the start of the vaccination campaigns, which began on December 27.

"Of course, we all know that it could have gone much faster if all the pharmaceutical companies had fulfilled their contracts," lamented the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, taking stock of the first quarter of the campaign during the European summit held last week. pass.

"Substantial increase in production"

Despite the initial bump, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, in charge of redirecting the campaigns, believes that there is already "a substantial increase in production."

And this Wednesday he was convinced that "by mid-July we will be in a position to deliver sufficient doses to the Member States to achieve herd immunity, provided, of course, that they are injected."

The European Commissioner for Health, Stella Kyriakides, points out that "deliveries are expected to triple in the coming months."

And it considers “achievable” the goal of vaccinating 70% of the adult population (365 million inhabitants) before the end of the summer, that is, 255 million people.

Community sources estimate that, by the end of June, around 60% of the adult population will already be vaccinated in the four EU states with the most inhabitants (Germany, France, Italy and Spain).

The Von der Leyen Commission puts a good part of its credibility on the success of campaigns that are national but have been organized centrally.

The community body took on the task of negotiating with various pharmaceutical companies the price and number of doses of future vaccines to ensure that all Member States receive vaccines at the same time, regardless of their size or wealth.

Brussels successfully closed this first stage and has made available to the States a portfolio of vaccines of up to 2.3 billion reserved doses with five laboratories, of which four (BioNTech / Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Janssen) already have the product authorized. and one (Curevac) is waiting.

The second quarter, according to the Commission, will allow a substantial increase in the rate of distribution, with 200 million doses from BioNTech / Pfizer, 55 million from Janssen and 35 million from Moderna.

AstraZeneca will fail again and only plans to deliver 70 million of the 180 million committed.

Even so, Brussels estimates that states will receive about 360 million doses and notes that Janssen's only requires one prick to be effective, which will help accelerate the number of people vaccinated.

The Commission also recalls that the EU has kept vaccine export channels open, unlike the US or the UK.

Brussels imposed an export control system at the end of January, but so far only the output of a quarter of a million doses of AstraZeneca has been slowed and the shipment has been allowed to 41 countries out of a total of 68, 3 millions.

Community sources also underline the success of the vaccine developed by the German laboratory BioNTech in collaboration with the American Pfizer.

Its product, dubbed Comirnaty, has become an essential part of vaccination campaigns both in the EU and in the US and UK.

The success of the new mRNA technology has catapulted BioNTech, which in the last quarter of 2020 multiplied its turnover by 12 in relation to the same quarter of the previous year.

The small company founded in 2008 could become one of the biggest European business successes of recent years if the production and use of its vaccine does not suffer any setbacks.