EU leaders have rushed to quell the growing unrest over the slow pace of national vaccination campaigns, promising that everyone who wants to be vaccinated will be.
Meanwhile, the founder of BioNTech, the German company that pioneered the first vaccine approved in Europe, said the EU was too slow to secure the stock from the sting, and warned of possible bottlenecks with supplies amid a rising global demand.
France was under the greatest pressure to accelerate its vaccination campaign, with only a few hundred doses administered so far, compared to tens of thousands in Germany and nearly a million in the United Kingdom. To fully protect an individual, it takes two shots of the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine.
Doctors and opposition politicians accused the French government of being too cautious in their approach, in part to accommodate skeptics of vaccines, and that they were ill-prepared for the logistical challenges of the deployment. President Emmanuel Macron reiterated these concerns in his televised New Year’s speech, saying that he would not allow an unjustified slowness to take hold “for bad reasons”.
“Every French person who wants to should be able to vaccinate,” he added.
After France initially decided to concentrate on elderly people in care homes and not vaccinate nursing and medical staff until the end of February, France announced that medical staff aged 50 and over would receive the shots from Monday. France will also open its first urban vaccination centers before the beginning of February. “Rest assured, the vaccination campaign will soon gain momentum,” said Health Minister Olivier Véran.
Meanwhile, Uğur Şahin, CEO of BioNTech, the German vaccine manufacturer, criticized the EU strategy for obtaining vaccines, saying it was too reluctant. “The process in Europe was certainly not as fast and simple as in other countries,” he said. Şahin told Der Spiegel. ‘Partly because the European Union is not directly empowered, and the member states say about it. In a negotiation. . . it can take time. ”
President Emmanuel Macron says every French person who wants to be vaccinated © AFP / Getty
He said the EU was also betting on other producers not being able to deliver as fast as BioNTech and Pfizer did. “There was a clear impression that ‘we will get enough, and that things will not be so bad, and that we have it under control,'” Mr Şahin said.
He also warned about the pressure on the delivery of the BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine. “It does not look so rosy at the moment, a gap has arisen because there is a lack of other vaccines that have received approval and we need to fill this gap with our vaccine,” he said. The US has ordered 200 million doses of BioNTech / Pfizer vaccine, while the EU has secured 300 million.
It is not just France that is being criticized for its slow rollout. Although the US started faster than France or Germany, it came far from its target of vaccinating 20 million people by the end of December, with only 2.8 million being targeted last month.
Some 170,000 people in long-term care facilities received the shot on December 30, although doses of 2.2 million were distributed to residents, according to information released by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.
In the UK – the first country to launch a mass vaccination campaign using the BioNTech / Pfizer jab – there was also hiccup. Nearly 945,000 people have received the shot since December 8th. But there are already doubts whether the government will be able to deliver on its promise by the end of March to vaccinate all Britons over 50 and younger whose health is particularly vulnerable.
British ministers have seen the approval of the country’s own vaccine, developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, this week as a ‘game changer’. However, only 530,000 doses are available on Monday when vaccinations begin with the new product.
This is in part because each dose dose needs to be checked for safety and quality before it can be released. Health officials say the rate-limiting factor will be how quickly manufacturers can deliver the doses.
UK chief medical officers warned this week that the availability of Covid-19 vaccines would be a problem for a few more months. “There is a shortage of vaccines that cannot be wished away,” they said.
In Germany, too, officials have come under pressure over the slow pace of the vaccination campaign. Health Minister Jens Spahn spoke to reporters earlier this week urging people to be patient and saying the stock of the vaccine is ‘now, around the world’. But he maintained that the situation would ease as more vaccines were approved.
Lars Klingbeil, secretary general of the Social Democrats, said Mr. Spahn blamed the slow start of implementation. “The minister had months to prepare for the planned start of vaccinations,” he told the Rheinische Post. “And he also got all the necessary powers to do that.”
Additional reporting by Sara Germano, Donato Mancini and Davide Ghiglione