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Spreading orders across manufacturers was actually quite prudent. Sanofi's mRNA vaccine is delayed. We have no reaon to believe that is was impossible that the same could have happened to Biontech / Pfizer and / or Moderna.

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.

Yea but that's for first dosage given until end of June. That's still 4.5 months away. A long time considering thousands of infections and hundreds of deaths.

Maybe paying a bit more would have been more intelligent (see Israel) than negotiating for months on end.

The problem was, as usual, EU countries' nationalism and wealth disparity. Macron insisted that the EU not order more doses from Germany's Biontech than from French Sanofi. So far so usual, but the worst problem were the Eastern European countries - they insisted on also keeping AstraZeneca with their 1.78€ a dose on board because well they are poor and can't afford more.

The EU bet pretty heavily on AstraZeneca and that's not the Eastern European countries fault. The EU already ordered in August, while they only ordered from Biontech and Moderna in November (11th and 25th). It wasn't wrong to buy AstraZeneca, it's cheap and more importantly easy to handle. The failure was to bet so much on it. AstraZeneca wasn't something that was odered as well, it was and still is THE vaccine that's intended for the largest part of the population.

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.

> So far so usual, but the worst problem were the Eastern European countries - they insisted on also keeping AstraZeneca with their 1.78€ a dose

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

Source: http://urpl.gov.pl/sites/default/files/OFICJALNY%20DOKUMENT%...

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.

Nope, AZ was 1.78 a dose while BT was 12€ (of which 2 are needed, so 24€ a person): https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/belgien-politi...

Unfortunately the EU still communicates there is no problem with the procurement but only with evil pharmaceutical companies not delivering as promised. There will not be any remorse.

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.

The EU messed up but they are at least publicly owning up to some of the blame (finally): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/10/ursula-von-der...

Well, really owning up to a mistake that will cost a few tens of thousands of lives would at least be a resignation.

In that particular interview, I tend to agree. However I've seen/read multiple other interviews and talk shows where EU politicians talk quite differently. They may admit some general mistakes (without naming one) but still dispute each and every critic.

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.

Sure. It could also be that the end of the second quarter only means that the doses are delivered on 30th of June and that actual vaccination will be a little later than that. And yes, 4.5 month is a long time, i just wanted to point out that until the end of the summer probably everybody who wants to will have a chance to be vaccinated - at least in Germany. That is though if the organization of actually vaccinating people keeps up with that.

It is also worth mentioning that the AstraZeneca vaccine is being sold at cost. They're not making any profit from it.