London: The contract between the European Union (EU) and vaccine manufacturer AstraZeneca is valid until all the delivery of the the required Covid-19 doses, a spokesperson of the bloc announced here.
The contract remains in force until the last doses are delivered, Xinhua news agency quoted Stefan de Keersmaecker, the European Commission’s spokesperson for health, as saying citing a clause of the contract.
The Commission took AstraZeneca to court last month over its failure to respect the commitment to deliver Covid-19 vaccine doses to EU member states.
In total, AstraZeneca is supposed to deliver 300 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine to the EU.
So far, the company has only delivered 30 million doses in the first quarter of 2021, rather than the 100 million doses originally promised for that period, according to the spokesperson.
AstraZeneca has promised to provide 70 million for the second quarter of 2021.
European Commission chief spokesperson Eric Mamer clarified that the current contract with AstraZeneca covers the 2020-2021 period.
The Commission negotiated with several vaccine manufacturers in Europe, investing in their production capacity in exchange for a promised number of vaccine doses.
Unfortunately, AstraZeneca was not able to honour the terms of its contract and fell behind schedule, said the Commission.
Reiterating that the Covid-19 vaccine from the company was very important for the EU’s inoculation strategy, the bloc said that it doesn’t wish to end the current contract, but wants to see the promised doses delivered.
We are not saying that we want to terminate the contract… We just want to make sure that we can get to a situation where the company delivers the doses that have been set in the contract, said Mamer.