By the end of the summer, all adult EU citizens should be vaccinated, by July 70 percent.
The EU Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton announced.
Munich - The EU holds out the prospect of an end to the long wait for corona vaccine.
According to Die
Welt
, the EU's plan is to achieve a sufficient supply of initial vaccinations by autumn.
This was announced last Thursday by EU Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton, who has headed the EU Commission's vaccination task force for two months.
He wanted to put more pressure on the vaccine manufacturers to keep their delivery promises.
The new production facility for the Biontech / Pfizer vaccine in Marburg will also help.
Breton said at a press conference: “We now have enough delivery commitments by mid-July that we can ensure that 70 percent of adult EU citizens can be vaccinated by mid-July, and with all delivery commitments we have, 100 percent of adults up to at the end of summer ”.
420 million vaccine doses for the entire EU, including the failure of Astrazeneca deliveries
420 million vaccine doses against the coronavirus are on the way by the end of July.
Already 360 by the end of June. This calculation even takes into account the worst-case scenario that too little or no vaccine comes from Astrazeneca.
Breton said: "According to our calculations, we will achieve our vaccination goals even if AstraZeneca's 70 million doses fail".
The EU mainly relies on the vaccines from Biontech / Pfizer (200 million), Johnson & Johnson (50-55 million) and Moderna (35 million).
The bill does not include the German vaccine Curevac, which is still awaiting approval.
In the second half of the year, the EU even expects almost a billion doses of vaccine.
By then the production capacities should have increased enormously.
These vaccinations are necessary for booster vaccinations, also because of the constantly changing virus variants.
From September 100 million vaccine doses per month can be produced
"In September or October we will have a production capacity of 100 million cans per month," said Breton.
The number of the promised vaccination doses is higher than before.
EU Commission President Ursula von-der-Leyen's forecast was that only 70 percent of EU citizens could be vaccinated by the end of the summer - and even this announcement was doubted by many.
Breton emphasized that it was completely unnecessary to order the Russian vaccine Sputnik V.
Although he generally welcomes the new vaccine, he believes that Sputnik V would take too long in the current situation before it can be manufactured in the EU.
The reason for this is that it takes up to a year to build factories that produce the vaccine in Europe.
“But now is the critical time for us,” he said.
Vaccination in Germany has been rather slow so far.
This is also confirmed by the current corona numbers.
