EU wants to buy 10 mn AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from Serum Institute of India

After being hit by a shortfall, the European Union has turned to India for 10 million doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from the Serum Institute, which is the world’s largest vaccine maker.

A government official told Reuters that any quick approval of the EU request is unlikely, with India scrambling to expand its own domestic vaccination drive. He said the United Kingdom is also pressuring New Delhi to export the second half of 10 million doses it had ordered from Serum. The Serum Institute of India was initially supposed to produce the AstraZeneca vaccine only for low and medium-income countries.

The EU is facing a slow pace of its vaccine rollout and as such is very unhappy with Oxford-AstraZeneca as it failed to deliver the promised doses. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says the firm must catch up on its promised deliveries to the EU and honour the contract it has with member states.

However, AstraZeneca, according to BBC, which has supplied millions of doses to the UK has denied that it is failing to honour its contract with the EU. The company said its agreement with the EU allowed the option of supplying Europe from UK sites. The EU has ordered 400 million doses of the Oxford- AstraZeneca vaccine. The pharma company said supplies are coming from the US and a site in Seneffe in Belgium. A site in Leiden in the Netherlands is also expected to produce vaccines for both the EU and the UK. AstraZeneca is working with suppliers in 15 countries to make the vaccine.

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Reports highlight that production glitches have slowed vaccinations for the 450 million people in the 27-nation EU. The bloc’s per capita immunization lags that of countries such as Israel, the UK and the United States.

India has, so far, exported 64 million vaccine doses to 83 countries, and administered the same number of doses at home. On Thursday, its inoculation drive expanded to include everyone over the age of 45. This is expected to raise vaccine demand substantially.