The big problems with the EU's AZ purchase is that they bought less of it relative to their population than the UK (so had a commensurately reduced amount of production capacity allocated to them), signed the contract later (meaning less time to fix yield issues), and completely failed to grasp that signing a "best effort" contract for X units of a never-mass-produced vaccine on timescale Y didn't guarantee they'd be delivered on time. Like, the UK apparently only got something like a third the amount of AZ vaccine as expected by now in the initial contract and is more dependent on it than the EU, but you wouldn't even know there was a problem because the publicly-announced schedule was based on actual production numbers - and the UK contract had clauses with teeth to make sure AZ provided the information needed to make that possible. Not only that, the initial plans were ambitious enough that even after the main vaccine supplier underperformed hugely, the UK still ended up ahead of the EU despite most of their vaccines coming from suppliers who did perform as expected.
> Like, the UK apparently only got something like a third the amount of AZ vaccine as expected
So just how far behind the expected production is AZ? The UK only got a third, the EU is months behind schedule and half a dozen other countries are just around the corner waiting to have their contracts fulfilled.
> and the UK contract had clauses with teeth
Yeah, that would require halfway competent politicians, not something you find in the EU.
I got my first AZ shot it and I'm thankful it exists and really hope it works against the new variants. Maybe this is a chance for poorer countries like Ukraine, Moldova, the former Yugoslav republics and Albania to get their citizens vaccinated. Western Europe should probably donate part of their stocks to these countries through the Covax mechanism instead of letting it go to waste.
Around 16% if you count first dose vaccinations (which evidently you do). Doesn't change your major point, though.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...