There’s a ‘Vaccine War’ Happening in Europe

A Tale of two cities
Days after opening its gates, the largest Covid-19 vaccination center in Berlin, Germany, had to close down due to lack of doses. Merely 321 miles away in the city of Mainz, stands a building full of glass windows, and a large sign in its entrance saying, “Büro- und Laborgebäude” — offices and laboratories. At the bottom part of the sign, in green letters, appears the name of the company: BioNTech.
At this place, the biotechnology company headquarters, the idea, and research for the Covid-19 Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were born. This vaccine is now out of stock in the Berlin center, and many other centers throughout Germany.
Things got so bad that the most popular German publication Bild ran a headline saying: “That’s how Germany became a vaccine snail.” In Europe, Germany is not alone.
The European fiasco
Saying that the European Union vaccination campaign is a disaster would be an understatement. It’s going terribly, terribly, wrong. While Israel has now almost vaccinated a third of its population, the U.K. has vaccinated 7.4 million people, and the U.S. is inoculating a million people a day, countries in the European Union are lagging far behind.
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So why is this happening? There are several reasons.
The European Union decided, in an act of solidarity and financial benefit, to manage the negotiation and vaccine purchase as a single body. Not allowing every single country to approach the manufacturers on its own. This meant that the EU has a huge consumer-power, with 450 million citizens in the continent, and leaders were hoping to get a better deal for it.
It was also a declaration of solidarity. A message saying that no country in the union would be left behind. The rich and powerful Germany would receive the same deal as Greece. The two countries would start vaccinating on the same day.
However, the decision to act as a large unified body also meant that things were happening very slowly. Endless bureaucracy made the EU waste valuable time.
There was also a poor judgment of the current situation. “The assumption in the EU was that many other companies would come up with their vaccines,” Uğur Şahin, the CEO and founder of BioNTech told German press, “It would seem that the impression was: ‘We’ll get enough, it won’t be so bad, and we have this under control.’ It surprised me.”
Whereas the U.S. purchased 600 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in July, the EU waited until November to purchase half as much.
Now, all hell is breaking loose.
When things started turning bad, European solidarity went flying out the window. In a desperate attempt to jump-start its vaccination campaign, Germany went behind the EU’s back and independently purchased 30 million additional vaccine doses for its own use.
The EU that promised “there will be no parallel negotiations or parallel contracts,” did nothing. Seeing this, Hungry purchased 2 million doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. France and Denmark have begun purchasing leftover vaccine doses from European countries deciding not to use their full quota.
The bottom line is that the richer countries, or those not following the rules, were getting more vaccines than others.
The tension within the EU started rising. “The vaccine diplomacy has turned into vaccine hijacking,” said the Croatian PM. In Spanish media, the slow rollout was deemed a “lethal threat to the EU.”
Vaccine war
Soon after, things turned from bad to worse.
It started in mid-January when Pfizer announced a delay in vaccine shipment to the EU due to manufacturing changes. Six health ministers from six European countries wrote a letter to the European commission referring to the delay as “unacceptable.”
A few days after the Pfizer announcement, AstraZeneca told the EU it was cutting the vaccine delivery by 60% due to manufacturing problems at their Belgium factory. Instead of 80 million doses due to arrive in Europe by the end of March, only 31 million will be delivered.
The two announcements were first met with shock and criticism, but later the reaction turned into anger and rage.
The Italian PM threatened to sue the vaccine makers for a “serious contractual violation.” The president of the European Council later joined him, sending a letter to other EU leaders saying, “if no satisfactory solution can be found, I believe we should explore all options and make use of all legal means and enforcement measures at our disposal.”
The AstraZeneca chief disputed the claims, pointing the finger towards the EU for wasting time. “The U.K. supply contract was signed three months before the European vaccine deal meaning there had been an extra three months to fix all the U.K. glitches we experienced,” he told an Italian newspaper.
The EU struck back. “We reject the logic of first come, first served,” said Brussels health commissioner, “that may work at the neighborhood butchers but not in contracts.” The EU then initiated an inquiry and instructed Belgium inspectors to raid AstraZeneca’s Brussels factory.
Meanwhile, the Europeans shifted their sights to the U.K., demanding that AstraZeneca’s British factory transfer vaccines to the EU making up for the lost doses.
The U.K., relishing its position of power in a post-Brexit era, said that while a “goodwill gesture” is possible, all vulnerable British citizens will need to be vaccinated first.
The EU then pulled out one last “big gun,” threatening to ban vaccine exports from Europe. Basically meaning that the U.K. won’t get millions of Pfizer vaccine doses manufactured in Belgium until the EU gets its AstraZeneca vaccines first.
Some thoughts
While this “vaccine war” is going on, there were some new developments from a scientific point of view.
Germany’s vaccine committee decided to allow inoculating only those under 65-years-old with the AstraZeneca vaccine. The committee claims that there is “insufficient data” over the efficacy of this vaccine in older people.
The U.K. had already started vaccinating its elderly with the AstraZeneca vaccine, and naturally, this news caused some concern with British people. The British PM hurried to defend the vaccine and claim it's perfectly safe and effective.
While the German decision might be sound and based on the data, some have already made a suggestion that there is a connection between it and the vaccine war.
This is highly problematic. Having political and financial issues cloud all other debates is potentially very dangerous. When politics gets in the way of science or is even perceived as getting in the way, bad things happen. People lose trust. People die. The vaccine war could very well have real casualties. We can’t have that.

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