EU Denies Allegations Of Blocking COVID-19 Vaccine Delivery

AstraZeneca Vaccine. (Wikimedia Commons/Gencat)

JAKARTA - The European Union (EU) has expressly said that it has not blocked the delivery of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine to Australia, Tuesday, April 6.

The rebuttal from the EU came after AstraZeneca reportedly failed to meet the demand for the dose promised to Europe. This issue has been raised since March and until now the issue is still heating up.

The EU states that it is not responsible for AstraZeneca's failure to carry out its obligations to supply vaccines to other countries, including to Australia.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has claimed that the EU is asking Australia to revoke vaccine export permits. On the other hand, there is no response to the request letter for vaccine supply from Australia.

He said if the EU was willing to lift its ban on shipments, it would again request 3.1 million vaccines that should have arrived in Australia by the end of March.

EU's Feud with AstraZeneca

The EU launched export controls in late January. The system is carried out to ensure that drug manufacturers have fulfilled their contractual obligations before commercial exports are approved.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi also briefly told other E.U. leaders that they needed to speed up vaccinations while imposing consequences on pharmaceutical companies that did not meet the dose under the agreement.

The failure to meet the promised amount of vaccines led to the EU government's dissatisfaction with AstraZeneca. The company reduced shipments of vaccines that in Q1 are projected to send at least 80 million doses to only half on the grounds of difficult production.

EU Challenges Vaccine Blocking

EU spokesman Eric Mamer said no effort had been made to stop the 3.1 million vaccines planned to be delivered to Australia. He also said that the only EU decision regarding vaccine rejection was in early March.

"In the past, at that time there was only one request, which had been rejected, which was a request to Australia but for a much smaller amount (250,000 doses) that had been in place since some time ago and there have been no further developments since then," he said at a press conference on Wednesday, as quoted by The New Daily.

For information, the Australian government is currently struggling to vaccinate. But the delay in the arrival of 3.1 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine to the country hampered their vaccination program.

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