BRUSSELS – In vaccine-hungry, cash-rich Europe, the pursuit of more doses that countries trade with each other and weigh purchases in Russia and China, and offers of intermediaries ranging from real to direct fraud.
Amid build-up of anger over a slow implementation of the European Union’s coronavirus vaccine, which has left them far behind several other affluent countries, many EU countries are looking beyond the bloc’s joint purchasing strategy, which is now sadly overwhelming. lyk.
A huge black – or at least gray – market has sprung up with locations from around the world at often exorbitant prices. Vendors have approached EU governments, claiming they offer 460 million doses of vaccines, according to early results of an investigation by the Anti-Fraud Agency shared with The New York Times.
While they are still planning to get vaccines from the block, some countries are also trying to negotiate directly with drug manufacturers, noting the murky open market where they are still unsure about the sellers and the products. Some have also agreed to exchange vaccines with each other, and some now have reason to regret it.
The European Union was slow last year to make massive purchases from drug companies, which acted weeks after the United States, Britain and a handful of other countries. This year, the bloc was blinded by the slower-than-expected production of vaccines, and individual countries carried out the explosion.
About 5 percent of the EU’s nearly 450 million people received at least one dose of vaccine earlier this week, compared to nearly 14 percent in the United States, 27 percent in Britain and 53 percent in Israel, according to Our World in Database and Governments.
The obstacles posed by the world’s richest group of countries have made vaccine politics toxic. The attack of many Europeans is particularly on the lookout for a former EU member, Britain, who is continuing with his vaccination and reopening plans, while EU societies remain locked in the midst of a new upsurge of dangerous variants, while their economies deeper into a recession.
In the last months of 2020, several countries have decided to abandon their population-based share of vaccines purchased by the EU. Most of the trade involved less affluent countries, with less infrastructure and hard-to-reach populations. They sell their shares of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which require ultra-cold storage, and instead make the cheaper AstraZeneca vaccine, which is easier to handle, the center of their vaccination campaigns.
But then AstraZeneca, whose vaccine was developed with the University of Oxford, cut the expected delivery from the EU due to production problems. And despite the assurance of experts, many Europeans have expressed doubts about it after some leaders questioned its effectiveness in older age groups, which were not well represented in clinical trials (Pfizer also had a slowdown in supply.)
A decision by any country to abandon doses is a possible political dynamite, and the accusations have begun. Poland gave up part of its expensive Moderna quota expected late this year, arguing that it would not be fast enough to make much difference, as at that point they had enough deliveries from AstraZeneca and possibly the Johnson & Johnson- vaccine would expect.
“I would never give up on buying safely and efficiently,” said Andrzej Halicki, a Polish member of the European Parliament. “As a former minister, I can tell you that in my opinion this is a criminal act, and that it is a breach of duty.”
A German official said the country had secured 50 million doses of Moderna vaccines, a significantly larger number than it would have received under the EU-based population-based allocation. EU officials have confirmed that Germany has obtained at least some of its extra doses from other member states.
Germany has also reached a controversial side agreement with Pfizer-BioNTech, for an extra dose of 30 million to be delivered later in 2021, which has sparked outrage in parts of the EU as the move is seen as the richest EU nation leading the bloc to a collective strategy. and then hedge by also going after it alone.
The fear is that the side-transactions could undermine the collective purchasing power and undermine the delivery schedules to all 27 countries.
The European Commission has made it clear that EU countries should not cut separate transactions with the same pharmaceutical companies with which they negotiated for the whole block of contracts.
According to a government official who would not say which nation or countries they gave up, the Netherlands insured 600,000 doses of the shot that Pfizer developed with the German company BioNTech from one or more other EU countries.
France did not disclose any deals he made, but Prime Minister Jean Castex said: “If random doses are available, the instruction is clear: France will buy immediately.”
Hungary unilaterally approved and bought Russian and Chinese vaccines, and others, such as Croatia and the Czech Republic, weigh similar moves. EU officials say they are receiving calls from several other member states eager to see the bloc approve the Russian shot, Sputnik V.
In a worrying turnaround, senior government officials and even heads of government received dozens of unsolicited offers for vaccinations. Few of the sellers appear to be legitimate entrepreneurs, said Ville Itala, director general of the European Fraud Office, known as OLAF.
“They offer vaccinations, very large quantities, so far it is 460 million doses, which is about 3 billion euros,” he said in an interview this week. “So it’s not a small business, it’s a huge business and it’s constantly growing.
Mr Itala said he had taken the unusual step of disclosing the information, more than a week into his agency’s investigation, because the potential risks to Europeans were huge.
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, said last week: ‘I think in a crisis like this you will always have people who want to benefit from or benefit from the problems of others, and we are seeing an increasing number of fraud and attempted fraud. “
But with offers piling up, officials say they are willing to investigate each one thoroughly before rejecting it.
“Where a few thousand, or a few hundred thousand, vaccines are apparently ready to fall off a truck, a Hungarian scout must be ready to catch them,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said earlier this month. .
In the neighboring Czech Republic, Prime Minister Andrej Babis has said he has received offers from brokers in Dubai and elsewhere, while such stands have also reached the inbox of top government officials in Germany, Greece and Finland, to name but a few.
Itala said most intermediaries sell the AstraZeneca shot. The company said it only deals with governments or multilateral organizations, such as through the Covax initiative. But that does not rule out the possibility that countries will quietly sell it to third parties.
“AstraZeneca has not approved any shipments of the vaccine outside of the existing contract with the European Union,” a company spokesman said. “There may be no private sector offering for the sale or distribution of the vaccine in Europe.”
While many of the offers are fraudulent, others may be legal, officials say, even if the prices quoted are astronomical.
In Italy, many of the stands went to local officials who have extensive power over health care systems. The Italian police and other authorities are actively setting up the sites.
“If these doses are bought legally and there was a regular process, we could also consider buying them,” said Cesare Buquicchio, a spokeswoman for the country’s health minister. “Because of the delays in deliveries, we can think about this, nothing is unchangeable; we can discuss it again at European level.”
In the northern region of Emilia-Romagna, Raffaele Donini, the top health official, said he had received several emails offering millions of vaccines, including one from J&G General Service DOO, a company in Croatia that offered AstraZeneca doses against a price that was not much. higher than what the EU negotiated.
The director of the company, Juri Gasparotti, said that a ‘large pharmaceutical company’ outside the EU, which he did not want to name, was in direct contact with AstraZeneca and would supply the group.
Mr. Gasparotti said vaccine manufacturers are “hypocrites” for claiming that they only sell to government agencies.
Other vaccines that Mondial Pharma, a company in the Swiss city of Lugano, offered to Emilia-Romagna cost more than those that Mr. Gasparotti offered.
Pierfrancesco Lucignano, a marketing officer at Mondial Pharma, said the company offered three million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which he said was manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, the official Indian manufacturing partner for AstraZeneca, for about 26 euros per dose. . byna $ 32.
“There are other countries outside Europe that are buying it,” he said, adding that he was negotiating with South American and African countries.
In the northern Italian region of Veneto, millions of doses have also been offered by intermediaries with whom they have done business in the past. “We are not talking about fraudsters coming here and pretending to have a garage full of vaccines,” region president Luca Zaia told a news conference earlier this month.
Mr. Donini, the official in Emilia-Romagna, said his region had derailed the negotiations and suggested that the Italian state make full use of the link with the brokers.
“We have activated a setup that allows us to go 100 kilometers per hour,” he said, “and we are forced to go 20 kilometers per hour because we do not have fuel, while we know that there are people. is what we can fill. ”
Emma Bubola reported from Rome, Constant Méheut of Paris, Monika Pronczuk of Brussels, Thomas Erdbrink of Amsterdam, and Melissa Eddy from Berlin.