Italy could soon sign a contract with Moderna for the supply of extra doses of the anti-Covid vaccine compared to those already provided for under the agreement signed at European level. He writes it Republic, adding that the premier’s initiative Mario Draghi it moves “out of the rut of collective bargaining “and that” the American company is considering accepting the Italian proposal “.
The agreement “it would not break the common European supply front: preventive agreements (Advance purchase agreements) stipulated by the Commission drawing from the 2.7 billion euro fund of the Emergency support instrument, in fact, indeed prohibit the possibility for EU members to individually sign preventive contracts with the same producers, but allow them to be made subsequently provided they do not conflict the distribution agreed with the Commission “, writes the group’s newspaper Gedi.
Supply, as this is clearly a matter of national security, our intelligence has been working for months. Vaccines are now more valuable assets than weapons. And they represent the main bargaining chip in geopolitical relations between countries. Whoever has more supplies obviously has greater power. This is why, read now, two choices, taken by the Conte government in recent months, which Copasir would like to discuss also take on a greater specific weight. If, only, the Committee resumed its work.
The first point concerns the relationship between Italy and AstraZeneca. A fact that the Irbm of Pomezia, in the spring of 2020, had invited the government to make contact with the University of Oxford to become “co-owner” of the vaccine then developed by the Anglo-Swedish company. “There have been a couple of meetings – said the president of Irbm, Piero di Lorenzo – with representatives of our institutions, but there was no possibility of financing a foreign university in a short time. “70 million euros would have been enough to have priority over those vials today.
There is also a second fact. Between April and May, the intelligence services still deliver another crucial piece of information to the government: the first tests carried out on Reithera, the Italian vaccine, are very encouraging. The then extraordinary commissioner, Domenico Arcuri, is also convinced of this, asking Conte for the possibility of entering the company’s capital in order to finance and accelerate its development. They are all convinced that, if done quickly, the Italian vaccine could be ready in the first months of 2021. But no one from the government responds. Yet the interest was there, since that money will come. Eight months later. Too late.