EU is ‘catching up’ with UK on coronavirus vaccinations, says Ursula von der Leyen

Mrs von der Leyen has been under sustained pressure becuase of the sluggish roll-out of jabs in the EU.

Credit: Shutterstock

The European Union is catching up with Britain on coronavirus vaccinations, Ursula von der Leyen said, as she branded the British strategy of delaying the second dose as too risky.

The president of the European Commission responded to criticism that the EU vaccination roll out was too slow by pointing out that 130 countries in the world had had no jabs at all. 

Mrs von der Leyen said more than twice the number of Italians than Britons had had both jabs and the EU as a whole had given out more first doses. 

“We’re catching up. Britain has administered 17 million first doses. There are 27 million in the EU. In Italy, with a population similar to that of Great Britain, twice as many citizens received full vaccination protection with the second dose as in the UK,” she said.

She told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper, “I think it’s risky to simply postpone the second vaccination. We should adhere to the specifications that the manufacturers determined in their extensive clinical tests.”

27.47 doses per 100 people have been administered in the UK, compared to just 6.12 across the EU. 5.7 jabs per 100 people have been given in France and 6.1 in Germany. 

Mrs von der Leyen said she could understand the “frustration” felt by many EU citizens as the bloc lagged behind Britain, the US, Israel and Turkey in vaccinations. 

The former German defence minister added, “Nobody has been vaccinated in 130 countries around the world. Europe is among the first, albeit with fewer doses in the start-up phase than expected.”

Britain used faster emergency authorisation procedures to approve vaccines than the EU. The UK negotiated to secure the doses alone after rejecting an offer from Brussels last year to join the EU joint procurement scheme. 

Britain’s vaccination strategy was  far more successful than the EU’s failed and slow response to the coronavirus pandemic, Hungary’s prime minister said. 

“We’ve sought to do something together that we could have managed more successfully on an individual basis – take a look at the examples of Britain or Serbia,” Viktor Orbán said.

EU leaders will call for the continuation of tight coronavirus restrictions, including bans on non-essential travel such as holidays on Thursday, four days after Boris Johnson set out his roadmap out of lockdown. 

They will call for the acceleration of “authorisation, production and distribution of vaccines, as well as vaccination, in the weeks and months to come”, according to leaked draft conclusions for their Thursday video summit. 

Mrs von der Leyen said that she “would take the AstraZeneca vaccine without a second thought,” after reports in Germany and elsewhere in Europe that people were reluctant to have the jab.  

The AstraZeneca vaccine was falsely described as ineffectual by Emmanuel Macron and inaccurate news reports in Germany claimed it was ineffective during the row with the EU over supply shortfalls. 

AstraZeneca told the European Commission it  will deliver less than half the vaccines it promised for the second quarter, an EU official told Reuters on Tuesday. 

The British-Swedish pharmaceutical company said it would strive to fulfil its contracted 180m vaccines.