The Swedish-British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca will be behind on half of its deliveries of Covid-19 vaccines which were scheduled for this week in the European Union, a spokesperson for the group announced on Friday.
"We communicated to the European Commission and member states last week that one of the two batches (of vaccine) for delivery this week would need to be tested and would be delivered soon," the spokesperson said in a statement. by email.
"AstraZeneca remains on track to meet its delivery plans for the second quarter," he added, adding that weekly deliveries generally show "small fluctuations depending on a number of operational factors such as distribution or the good finish of safe and quality tests ”.
According to the Financial Times, which cites documents, the pharmaceutical group now plans to deliver 1.3 million doses to the 27 member states plus Iceland and Norway against 2.6 million which were planned for this week.
A decrease distributed "fairly according to the country", specifies the financial daily.
Recurring problem
Delays in delivery are a recurring problem and have created friction between the EU and the pharmaceutical company, and the UK.
The European Medicines Agency has also announced to examine a possible link between Johnson & Johnson's anti-Covid vaccine and cases of blood clots, and to expand its investigation into that of AstraZeneca, already implicated for the same kind of symptoms, to vascular problems.
On Wednesday, the EMA had already recognized that blood clots should be listed as a side effect, "very rare" but serious, of the AstraZeneca vaccine, especially in young subjects.
Distrust of the AstraZeneca vaccine has prompted many countries to set age limits for its use, or even to suspend its use.
For example, it is reserved for over 30s in the United Kingdom, where it has been widely used, over 65s in Sweden, and over 60s in the Philippines, Portugal, the Netherlands or Germany, which is now considering buying the controversial Sputnik V from Russia.
This Friday, before the EMA's announcements, the French health authorities had indicated that the 533,000 people under the age of 55 already vaccinated with a first dose of AstraZeneca would be offered a different vaccine for the second dose, to messenger RNA - either that of Pfizer / BioNTech, or that of Moderna.