Pascal Soriot, president and CEO of British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca, is confident that the company will be able to ramp up production of a coronavirus vaccine in the second quarter and that the company will speed up shipments to the European Union, MTI writes.
Soriot said at a hearing in the European Parliament that the company intends to deliver the required doses across its international network, including the United States, so that it can fulfill its contract with the European Union in the second half of the year.
Competing vaccine manufacturers, such as Moderna in the US and CureVac in Germany, were present at the hearing, but most questions were received by Soriot about why his company failed to honor EU contracts – upsetting the vaccination campaign schedule – but continued to that. Delivered to the UK.
Soriot said the company will try to deliver 40 million doses of the vaccine to the European Union by the end of March, less than half the amount promised for the first quarter.
The European Union, which lags far behind the United States and former EU member Britain in immunizing the population, has repeatedly called on AstraZeneca to provide more.
I am disappointed that the lower than expected production has had an impact on our ability to transport to the EU. “We will do our best to offer 40 million stakes by the end of the first quarter of 2021,” Soriot said.
The British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, which developed the vaccine with Oxford University, had previously promised to provide 90 million doses of the vaccine to the European Union in the first quarter.
In his previous speech to the European Parliament, Soriot did not mention shipments due in the second quarter, which amount to 180 million shares under the contract.
