EU leaders to pledge quicker provision of Covid vaccines

EU leaders will pledge to “accelerate the provision of vaccines” at a summit on Thursday, but a decision on the introduction of vaccination passports to facilitate tourism is to be postponed.

The deployment of coronavirus vaccines among the 27 member states remains slow, with just 6% of the adult population having received a jab compared with 27% in the UK. The administration of the vaccine is likely to continue to be disrupted by lower than expected supply.

According to the latest draft of a statement due to be issued by the leaders, they will recognise the problem by insisting that they will work on “stepping up efforts to accelerate the provision of vaccines”.

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“Vaccination has now begun in all our member states and our vaccine strategy has ensured that all member states have access to vaccines,” they will say. “Even so, we need to urgently accelerate the authorisation, production and distribution of vaccines, as well as vaccination.”

In a reference to the row with the Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca, whose deliveries have been smaller than expected due to production problems, the leaders will add that “companies must ensure predictability of their vaccine production and respect contractual delivery deadlines”.

Greece is among a number of member states whose economies are highly dependent on tourism and is seeking a commitment at leadership level to the provision of vaccine passports to allow people to travel if they have had a jab. This week the Guardian reported that “technical talks” have begun between officials in the UK and Greece over the format of such a document.

But in a sign of some nervousness on the issue in France and Germany, among others, where there are concerns that such a scheme will institutionalise discrimination, the leaders are only to commit “for work to continue on a common approach to vaccination certificates”, adding that they “will come back to this issue”.

“First it must actually be clearly resolved that vaccinated people are no longer infectious,” the German chancellor Angela Merkel said in a newspaper interview. “As long as the number of those who have been vaccinated is still so much smaller than the number who are waiting for vaccination, the state should not treat the two groups differently.”

Austria’s chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, said he would prefer a green pass system, similar to Israel’s. “Those who are vaccinated should have full freedom, but so should those who just had corona and are immune, and all those who take a test and can prove through the test that they are negative,” he told Germany’s Bild tabloid.

Merkel also used her media interview to give her full backing to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, following evidence that people are rejecting it in light of a slew of bad publicity, including Emmanuel Macron’s unsubstantiated claim that it was “quasi-ineffective”.

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Asked whether she would take the vaccine, Merkel responded that at the age of 66 she was not in the recommended group. The German authorities have initially suggested it only be used in younger groups given a lack of data on efficacy among the over-65s.

Rasmus Bech Hansen, chief executive of the data analytics company Airfinity, said the low uptake of AstraZeneca vaccine was a problem but that supply remained the major issue for the EU, with a lack of readiness to then distribute the stocks exacerbating differences between the EU countries.

According to the latest Airfinity analysis, Malta can expect to reach herd immunity by fully vaccinating 75% of its adult population by 8 August, but the current trajectory for Bulgaria and Latvia is for a similar level of protection to be secured around 21 October.

France, where Macron has come under criticism for his government’s faltering efforts to vaccinate, may have to wait until 26 September to achieve herd immunity, although an acceleration of the programme could see this date brought forward.

Meanwhile the lack of vaccine supply is being seen as an opportunity for criminals. The EU’s anti-fraud agency, Olaf, said on Thursday that EU governments had reported offers from “alleged intermediaries” for 900m doses of Covid-19 vaccines.

The agency said in a statement: “Olaf received information from several EU member states about offers of Covid-19 vaccines by alleged intermediaries. To date, all these different offers together represent over 900m vaccine doses for a total asking price of roughly €12.7bn [£11bn].”