EU rejects criticism for slow vaccine rollout across bloc

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Commission defended its coronavirus vaccination strategy Monday amid growing criticism in member states about the slow rollout of COVID-19 shots across the region of 450 million inhabitants.

Vaccinations programs in the 27 nation-bloc have gotten off to a slow start and some EU members have been quick to blame the EU's executive arm for a perceived failure of delivering the right amount of doses. In Finland, health authorities are reportedly unhappy that the country only received about 40,000 doses in December, instead of the 300,000 that were expected.

Facing a barrage of questions on vaccines during a news conference, EU Commission spokesman Eric Mamer said the main problem with the deployment of vaccination programs “is an issue of production capacity, an issue that everybody is facing."

“We have actually signed contracts that would allow member states to get access to 2 billion doses, largely enough to vaccinate the whole of the EU population," he said.

As part of its strategy, the EU has sealed six vaccines contracts, with Moderna, AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, Pfizer-BioNTech and CureVac. But only the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been approved for use so far in the 27-nation bloc.

The European Medicines Agency's human medicines committee met Monday to discuss the Moderna vaccine, but didn't issue a recommendation for it to be given the green light for use in the EU. The agency tweeted that the meeting “has not concluded today" and would continue Wednesday. It said it wouldn't comment further.

Mamer also clarified the role of the commission in securing contracts with potential drug makers. He said the executive's arm “acted as an investor" to provide funding to pharmaceutical companies developing vaccines. The goal was to speed up production capacities...