This is good news: Thursday March 11, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) authorized a new vaccine against Covid-19, that of Johnson & Johnson, which will therefore be added to those of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca, already administered on the Old Continent. This is all the more good news as it only requires one dose, and not two like its predecessors.
But the ability of the American industrialist to meet its commitments, and to deliver 55 million doses to the European Union (EU) in the second quarter, is questionable. “Of course when you start producing it’s a bumpy road”, commented, Tuesday March 9, Thierry Breton, who had informal exchanges with Johnson & Johnson and is preparing to step up the pace as soon as the EAJ has given his visa.
The European Commissioner, responsible for the industrial aspect of the Community vaccine strategy, does not consider it useful, at this stage, to review his forecasts. ” I am neither worried nor worried ”, he assures. However, as it stands, the production chain of the American group may suggest some difficulties. It goes through the United States – where the vaccines produced in the Netherlands are sent to be bottled there, before being sent back to Europe – and, therefore, is subject to the goodwill of Washington. Because across the Atlantic, where Johnson & Johnson has already lowered its deliveries in the first quarter, exports of vaccines and components are subject to authorization.
Export control mechanism
“There is indeed a risk that Johnson & Johnson will not deliver the 55 million doses promised in the second quarter. But Thierry Breton’s group and team are actively looking for solutions ”, recognizes a senior European official. Factories in Spain and Italy could be used in particular, “Which would already allow us to be sheltered from the threat of a “export ban” American “, continues this source. At the same time, Brussels and Washington are discussing. “The American and European vaccine production chains are highly interdependent. Even if we don’t have the same rules, we have common interests ”, judge Thierry Breton.
In this context, the Europeans plan to set up a mechanism to control the exports of components useful for the production of vaccines, in addition to the one they put in place on January 30 for vaccines, in the wake of the AstraZeneca case. A few days before, the Anglo-Swedish had announced that he would deliver less than a third of the 120 million doses promised to the Twenty-Seven for the first quarter. And raised the suspicion, among his European customers, that he had sold in the United Kingdom vaccines which were returned to them.
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