Send all pre-paid doses of AstraZeneca despite plans to delay supply: EU

The European Union has demanded UK pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca deliver all the pre-paid doses against the coronavirus and provide a report on the company's activities, following its recent decision to delay the supply of the vaccine to the EU, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Stella Kyriakides said on Monday.

Earlier in the day, Kyriakides asked AstraZeneca to explain the delays in coronavirus vaccine deliveries, assuring that the goal to have 70 per cent of the EU population inoculated by the summer remained unchanged.

"The European Union wants the ordered and pre-financed doses to be delivered as soon as possible and we want our contract to be fully fulfilled," Stella Kyriakides said in a press statement.

The commissioner stressed that the EU required AstraZeneca to provide a report regarding the company's activities, adding that the bloc would hold the second round of consultations with AstraZeneca this evening.

"The European Union has pre-financed the development of the vaccine and its production and wants to see the return. The European Union wants to know exactly which doses have been produced whereby AstraZeneca so far, and if, or to whom, they have been delivered. These questions were also discussed today in the joint steering board of the commission and the 27 member states with AstraZeneca," Kyriakides said, adding that "the answers of the company have not been satisfactory so far and that's why a second meeting is scheduled for tonight."

The EU has an agreement with AstraZeneca for up to 400 million doses of its vaccine, which was developed in conjunction with the University of Oxford.