EU leaders seek to inject energy into slow vaccine rollout

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders sought to inject new energy and a fresh sense of unity into the bloc’s lagging coronavirus vaccination efforts Thursday as concern mounts that new variants might spread faster than authorities can adapt.

The leaders opened talks via videoconference and debated ways to ease production bottlenecks and speed up the rollout of vaccines, as well as the severity of restrictions that should remain in place to halt the spread of the virus, which has killed more than 531,000 people across the bloc's 27 nations.

Divisions among EU member countries, including Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic, on tight border restrictions to stave off transmission has again raised the specter of travel delays and long traffic backups in a bloc that prides itself on being a seamless market.

“The epidemiological situation remains serious, and the new variants pose additional challenges. We must therefore uphold tight restrictions while stepping up efforts to accelerate the provision of vaccines,” the leaders will say, according to a draft summit statement seen by The Associated Press.

The European Commission has sealed deals with several companies for well over 2 billion vaccine shots — far more than the EU population of around 450 million — but only three have been authorized: jabs from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca. Officials say the Johnson & Johnson vaccine could be approved next month.

Not far from where European Council President Charles Michel chaired the video summit from Brussels, EU lawmakers grilled the heads of the big pharmaceutical companies.

AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot fielded many questions from the European Parliament, especially after he confirmed that the company would deliver less than half the vaccines it had committed to in the first quarter. The EU...