Not sure why you've been downvoted. It seems very clear that the commission is whipping up a political storm here to deflect from the fact it's done a bad job with vaccine procurement, which will cost thousands of European lives.
I don't see procurement as the main issue. The EU ordered around 2.3 billion doses, for 450 million inhabitants. Quantity wise, that's more than enough.
They did screw up distrbution so, royaly. And with distribution being the responsbility of the member states, well go figure. This contract has its defiencies, I really hate it that there are n consequences when delivery schedules aren't met. And how delivery schedules will be defined.
It wasn't the total quantity that was the problem. It was the timing. It's no use having hundreds of millions of doses if they aren't available until Q4.
nd everybody is having issues with supply, regardless of when contracts were signed. AZ has issues, Moderna has issues, Pfizer has issues. Instead of playing a blame game, I would have argely preferred to see a coordinated effort of getting the ordered doses earlier, and have deliveries coordinated with vaccination campaines. We have neither, and at least in germany I doubt we have anything like a planned vaccination campaig. None of which can be blamed on the suppliers or the EU.
And none of the urrent discussion are helpfull in solving any of these issues.
Re:AstraZeneca/EU contract
by calpaterson on Friday January 29, 2021 @03:12PM
(#25961785)
It takes a certain bravery to post any opinion that is critical of the EU on HN. Always a danger to your karma :)
- The UK signed months before
- The EU has been slow to vaccinate independent of that AZ dispute
- The EMA did only approve this vaccine (which the UK is already using) a few hours ago
This dispute has sadly been made into a hugely sensitive national dispute as a distraction from the poor performance of the EU's vaccination programme. Even if nothing had gone wrong with the AZ vaccine production, the EU still would have much poorer rollout than the UK. It's just a cover of jingoism.