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EU calls on AstraZeneca to deliver on its commitments

BRUSSELS, Jan 27 (KUNA) -- The European Union (EU) Wednesday repeated its call to AstraZeneca to live up to its contractual obligations in an escalating row between the EU and the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company.
"The 27 European Union Member States are united that AstraZeneca needs to deliver on its commitments in our agreement," EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides told an online press conference in Brussels.
"We are in a pandemic. We lose people every day. Pharmaceutical companies, vaccine developers, have moral, societal and contractual responsibilities, which they need to uphold," she stressed.
"I call on AstraZeneca to engage fully, to rebuild trust, to provide complete information and to live up to its contractual, societal and moral obligations," said Kyriakides.
The European Medicines Agency is expected to decide on approval of AstraZeneca's vaccine on 29 January, with a deal to purchase at least 300 million doses.
According to media reports, however, AstraZeneca now expects to deliver 31 million doses due to "production problems" at a vaccine factory in Belgium.
AstraZeneca was expected to deliver around 80 million doses to the EU by the end of March, but now says it will cut deliveries of its COVID-19 vaccine to the EU by 60 percent in the first quarter of the year.
AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot on Tuesday night in an interview said the company did not have a contractual obligation but rather a "best effort" to supply the EU with its vaccine.
Kyriakides expressed suspicion that AstraZeneca cannot meet its first quarter orders because it sold vaccine doses to non-EU countries.
"We reject the logic of first come, first served. That may work at the neighborhood butchers, but not in contracts. And not in our Advance Purchase Agreements," Kyriakides said.
She said explanations from the company have been insufficient which has caused deep dissatisfaction among the EU Member States. (end) nk.mb