It will not happen in Europe soon. The vaccine will be sold by manufacturers to highest bidder, that’s no surprise. And with the European ordering disaster as an adult I’ll get vaccinated best case in 2022.
For Germany the numbers publicly reported have gotten more conrete the last few weeks. While there are only few doses for the first quater (about 18mio for 9 mio people ~ 11% of the population), in the second quarter there will be lots of doses delivered. Confirmed numbers are, that doses for over 40 million people will be delivered in the second quarter (including some one time vaccines from Johnson&Johnson, as also with them there were contracts). Together with the 9 mio from the first, that is 49mio people (~61%) in the first half of 2021. So while it started slow (as was to expect), numbers will start rising soon.
These numbers were only for Germany, I don't know exactly how this reflects for Europe, but as all orders were made Europe-wide, I guess this is similar for the whole EU, at least that was the whole point for having a Europe-wide strategy.
Maybe paying a bit more would have been more intelligent (see Israel) than negotiating for months on end.
Money also can't be an issue, the EU has come up with 750B euros to fight the economical impact of the pandemics. That was already in April or so. For the vaccine the EU only had around 2.7B available for most of 2020. The UK alone spent more than that, the US over 10B$. The worst thing: 2B of those 2.7B euros were simply repurposed from an already existing fund. That means the EU states only had to come up with 700M euros together in total. Even ignoring all of that, the vaccine is so cheap compared to the costs of lockdowns (and lives) that the price simply does not matter much. Ironically the price they got is the part the EU is especially proud of and EU politicans are quick to point out that Israel payed twice as much per dose.
What they don't say that the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine's price depends on the amount and delivery date. So you could actually pay more to get the vaccine sooner. It seems the EU chose not to do that because they felt good enough with AstraZeneca (they were supposed to start production in October). Unfortunately that information isn't public so we don't know for sure. But this would both explain why the EU didn't expect significant shipments from Non-AZ vaccines in the first quarter and why they got it cheaper.
I thought AZ was €5 a dose.
Well, as for EE countries, the largest by population size (EE country that is in EU) is Poland and they (we, I live here) ordered from multiple sources, and AZ isn't the largest one (J&J is, followed closely by Pfizer):
Janssen Pharmaceutica NV / Johnson&Johnson 16,98 mln
Pfizer / BioNTec 16,74 mln
Astra Zeneca 16 mln
CureVac 5,65 mln
Moderna 6,69 mln
The biggest issue for me is that I don't think I'll be able to select which vaccine I want to use, I don't like the AZ inferior efficacy compared to mRNA vaccines, not to mention how it handles the SA version of COVID-19 virus.
It really must hurt them that even the heavily criticized politicians Johnson, Netanyahu and Trump did a much better job with procurement than the EU.
In one talk show for example a representative of the European Commission at least mentioned twice that in Africa even less people got vaccinated than in the EU. Like this would be the frame of reference.
Overall the EU ordered 4+ doses per inhabitant, incl. minors. That seems to be enough. Single sourcing is never good. In case of vaccines it would mean that a) vaccines are delayed b) manufacturing issues happen. Also ordering enough from each manufacturer would have blown their manufacturing capacites. The necessary capacity increases woud just have further delayed deliveries, as the Pfizer plant in Belgium shows quite clearly.
And yes, as far as I understood the AZ contract, alocations are the same for each EU memeber state. Proportionally of course, Germany will get more doses in absolute numbers than, say, Luxembourg.
Yes, maybe the EU could have tried working harder in ensuring they produce vaccines in enough quantities. This has cost real lives. That being said, a rushed and faulty vaccine is extremely harmful for public health as well, as it breeds anti-vaxxers and the time the next pandemic comes around, people will distrust the vaccine.
Maybe your specific country handled things around covid great, but not the place I come from, not its neighbors, not the place I live in currently, and not its current neighbors (covered some 15 european states by this in east & west/south).
Money spent on vaccine infrastructure would be absolutely nothing, especially when pooled by few/many states together, compared to havoc covid is wreaking on economies and still will in incoming months, no way to avoid it. Plus the small benefit of actually saving many lives should also hold some, not only political capital.
And they are using new site, Biontech in Marburg (a reporposed existing facility if memory serves well), Sanofi will be ready in summer to produce the Biontech vaccine as well. These things take time, rushing them is never a good idea.
All of them. Or at least all of the different kinds of factories (mRNA, vector, live vaccine) for the most promising candidates. If there is a shortage of something, force production, apply imminent domain, force cooperation. War against Corona should be handled like a war, not like a toilet paper shortage.
Done right, one could even get away with not reserving the second shot from the first deliveries. Another parallel between toilet paper and vaccines is the sudden demand spikes, read additional orders from the EU in January, that resulted in reduced short term availablity.
Ideally you spread the doses over a few weeks or months so that you can stop the vaccinations should any issues arise. I'm not saying the current distribution is fine, it's far too slow. But not even Israel has vaccinated everyone in a single day, nor would that be a god idea.
This is btw also the way Google play distributes updates. Instead of every user getting the update right away, they first give it to a small group, then that group increases gradually in numbers.