Europe's difficult vaccine war
Science has managed to accelerate the production of a vaccine against covid-19 to unthinkable limits. When the pandemic began, there was talk that it would take perhaps five years or more to have a vaccine, and it was not even clear that one would be obtained. Within a year, however, vaccination has already begun in several lucky countries depending on the availability of the product. This milestone is worth remembering because now that we have entered a new phase of maximum impatience, with fears that new variants will negate the effectiveness of vaccines, we are reading as a failure what is actually a success of global collaboration.
One of the problems is that politicians, pressured by a fed-up, anxious citizenry increasingly incensed by restrictions, have promised more than they could deliver. The target, they said, was for 70% of the European population to be vaccinated by the end of the summer. But they did not take into account the challenge this posed and the difficulties that would be encountered along the way. What could happen, and indeed has happened, is a supply problem due to technical issues. But it could also have been economic competition between countries to get the doses first, where profiteering could have caused speculation and corruption.
The first case came with the Pfizer vaccine, which drastically reduced its deliveries because it had to expand its plant to increase production. This has meant, for example, that in the last two weeks far fewer doses have arrived, and that in Catalonia in Catalonia possibly 10,000 people will have to wait longer than expected to receive the second dose. They will end up arriving, but at a slower pace. Nor are there many doses of the Moderna vaccine, which will not speed up deliveries until well into February. And now, in addition, AstraZeneca, which markets the so-called Oxford vaccine, the cheapest and easiest to administer and store, has warned that it will only be able to deliver 25% of what it had committed itself to because the two plants it has in Europe are producing at a lower rate than expected
This is when the Pandora's box has been opened. The European Union accuses it of breaching the contract, demands that it deliver doses of those manufactured in the UK plants for distribution in Europe, and also insinuates that it is selling vaccines manufactured in European plants to third countries, which the company denies. This "Europe first"is difficult to manage. The EU has wanted to negotiate everything en bloc, which is laudable, but it is accused of secrecy, of having been late in relation to other countries and of having wanted to negotiate the price too low. After a few days of maximum tension between AstraZeneca and the EU, it seems that in the last few hours tempers have calmed down a little, but it is not clear that the company will be able to deliver more vaccines or take them out of other plants to give them to Europe. There is a long way to go to achieve immunity, we will have to be patient, and above all we must remember that until vaccination does not reach everyone no one will be safe. Immunity, like science, has to be global to be effective
