The EU wants US-produced doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, writes the Financial Times

by time news

Time.news – TheEuropean Union will urge United States to allow the export of millions of doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to Europe AstraZeneca in Europe. The Financial Times writes, according to which the EU aims to obtain a green light from Washington for the flow of shipments of crucial ingredients for the European production of vaccines. “We are confident that we can work with the United States to ensure that vaccines produced or packaged in the United States for the fulfillment of vaccine manufacturers’ contractual obligations with the EU will be fully honored,” says a European Commission source quoted by the Financial Times .

The EU is confident in the more collaborative transatlantic relations inaugurated with the Biden administration. But the goal is not easy. As of March 5, 55 million Americans had received the first dose (17 percent of the population), of which 28.7 million had been fully vaccinated. The White House intends to use all internally produced doses to meet domestic demand, as per the former president’s executive order Donald Trump.

On vaccines also for Biden is ‘America First’

Washington ordered 300 million AstraZeneca doses, a vaccine which, moreover, does not yet have the ‘green light’ in the US. “The president’s first priority is to have vaccines available for every American”, a White House source confirmed to the authoritative financial newspaper, who then added: “The United States and the EU have committed to deepen the collaboration on pandemic response, including by improving public health capacities and information exchange. We know that to defeat this pandemic and change the economic recovery, we must work with our allies and partners. “

Among other things, the EU must ensure that US laws do not hinder the shipments of raw materials necessary for the production of vaccines in Europe: one of the problems is European dependence on the United Statesi for supplies of lipid nanoparticles, which are essential for new mRNA technology vaccines made by companies such as BioNTech / Pfizer and Moderna.

As for AstraZeneca, it insists that it will be able to reach the target of supplying 40 million doses in the EU by the end of the first quarter (initially it was 100 million by the end of March); and the company has also announced that it will have to procure 90 million EU doses for the second quarter from outside the Union, but it is not clear from where. In any case, the CEO of AstraZeneca, Pascal Soriot, in a hearing at the European Parliament in February, he assured that the company works “full time the whole week to improve deliveries” and that it expects to “meet expectations for the second quarter”.

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