AstraZeneca will not be able to supply the expected number of doses of its vaccine to Europe. It is reported by Bild.
According to the German newspaper, one of the reasons for the delivery failure is a fire at a vaccine production plant under construction in the Indian city of Pune. Austrian media reports that in the first quarter of 2021 Austria will receive three times fewer doses than expected, 600,000 instead of two million doses.
Earlier it was reported that the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, one of the producers of the vaccine against coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, will reduce the supply of the drug to European countries while it modernizes its production. The explanation is that the firm is expanding its production capacity: it plans to produce 2 billion doses a year instead of the 1.3 billion doses its plants are capable of now. According to preliminary forecasts, the situation will change in February.
Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden, and Estonia sent a letter to the European Commission in which they resented the reduction of vaccine supplies by Pfizer and BioNTech. They called on the main EU executive body to put pressure on the companies and achieve stability and transparency of the drug supplies.
