Oxford vaccine firm pulls out of meeting with EU over supply of jab
AstraZeneca has pulled out of a meeting with the European Union to discuss delayed vaccine commitments, an EU official has said.
It comes after the EU issued an angry warning to the pharmaceutical group and accused it of failing to deliver millions of doses of the Covid vaccine to the bloc. AstraZeneca said on Friday it would not meet its contractual delivery commitments to the EU due to ‘reduced yields’ in the supply chain.
This week EU Commissioner for health, Stella Kyriakides blasted the announcement as ‘not acceptable’, and added that the EU would ‘take any action required to protect its citizens and rights’.
AstraZeneca’s chief executive Pascal Soriot later hit back at Kyriakides, and argued that ‘glitches’ in the EU’s supply chain were due to the bloc singing its vaccine contract three months behind the UK.
He told Italian newspaper La Repubblica: ‘The UK contract was signed three months before the European vaccine deal, so with the UK we have had an extra three months to fix all the glitches we experienced.
‘As for Europe, we are three months behind in fixing those glitches.’
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