Pfizer vaccine plant repair will delay delivery of European countries anxious

Pfizer announced today that it will delay the delivery of its new coronavirus vaccine for the next three to four weeks due to modifications at its key plant in Belgium. This is a major blow to the vaccination program in European countries.

Pfizer is working with German biotech company BioNTech to develop the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine. Pfizer said that in order to expand production since mid-February, the plant in Piers (Puurs), northern Belgium, had to be repaired, and that in late February and March, the vaccine delivery would “significantly increase”.

The European Union’s executive committee said that the number of vaccines originally promised for the first quarter of this year will be delivered on schedule.

But European countries rushing to vaccinate more people are unhappy with Pfizer’s delayed deliveries. The epidemic has so far claimed about 2 million lives worldwide, with Europe also being the hardest hit.

Germany, Europe’s largest economy, expressed regret over the “temporary and unexpected” delay and called on the EU executive committee, which is responsible for procuring vaccines for all member states, to ensure that future delivery schedules are clear.

The health ministers of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden wrote a joint letter to the EU Executive Committee saying that the “unacceptable” situation “undermines the credibility of the vaccination process” and further called on the Commission to “ask (the pharmaceutical companies) to publicly explain the situation”.

While Canada, on the other side of the Atlantic, is also frankly suffering from the impact, Minister of Procurement Anita Anand believes that “when the global supply chain is stretched beyond capacity, such delays and problems can be expected.

The delayed delivery of vaccines may have added to European anger over the EU’s vaccination program. The EU has already been criticized for being slower than the U.S. and U.K., and has been blamed for failing to ensure early access to enough vaccines; only last week the EU finalized a doubling of the Pfizer & BNT vaccine supply to 600 million doses.