February 25, 2021 – AstraZeneca expects to deliver less than half the 180 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine to the EU in the second quarter of 2021. The total will be about 130 million doses — well below the 300 million contracted.
The EU has now ordered 2.6 billion doses of vaccines from six manufacturers. The European Medicines Agency has so far approved three for use, of which it has requested 1.2 billion doses — nearly enough for three jabs for every adult in the bloc. However, the roll-out has been slow, with Germany, France and other countries struggling to accelerate their vaccination programmes.
According to Jens Spahn, Germany’s health minister, each of Germany’s 16 regions could administer 300,000 doses of vaccine a day, yet they manage only 140-150,000 vaccinations a day.
Germany, France, and some other countries have restricted the AstraZeneca vaccine to under-65s — Germany has received more than 1.5 million AstraZeneca doses, but only used 240,000.
France has administered just 3.9 million out of 7.7 million doses received — one of the worst records in the EU, according to website Covidtracker.fr/vaccintracker.
By contrast, Denmark and Sweden aim to fully inoculate every adult who wants it by the end of June — a month before the UK.
Denmark plans to quadruple its capacity to 400,000 shots a day from March until the end of July, aiming to vaccinate 3 million of its 5.8 million population.
Sweden aims to deliver nearly 4 million shots a month between April and June to an adult population of 8.2 million.
