European Union coronavirus vaccine woes increase
A second coronavirus vaccine producer has warned of source issues, frustrating EU work to distribute the jab.
UK drug-maker AstraZeneca said a production issue meant preliminary volumes will be lower than anticipated.
The European Commission said it had been trying to obtain additional information.
This comes on top of a halt to vaccinations in a few parts of Europe because of a cut in deliveries of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
AstraZeneca, which developed its vaccine with Oxford University, disclosed the problem in a statement, but gave few details.
"First volumes will be less than originally anticipated due to lowered yields at a making site in your European source chain," it said.
Reuters news agency estimates a great unnamed EU official due to saying that the business had told the EU that it could reduce to 31m - a good cut of 60% - the number of doses it might deliver to the bloc found in the first quarter of this year.
Unlike the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, Astra-Zeneca's product is yet to be approved by the EU's drug regulator, though that is expected towards the end of this month.
AstraZeneca has signed a handle the EU to supply at least 300 million dosages of its vaccine.
Austrian media have reported that sole 600,000 of two million AstraZeneca doses promised by the end of March will get to the country promptly, with the rest of the 1.4m now getting delivered in April.
A delay would be "completely unacceptable", Austrian Wellbeing Minister Rudolf Anschober said.
Threats of legal actions
For Pfizer, the US organization said it had to chop shipments for another few weeks although it worked to improve capacity in its Belgian processing plant. The EU has ordered 600 million dosages from Pfizer.
The Pfizer cuts have forced Germany's virtually all populous state, North-Rhine Westphalia, and several regions in Italy to suspend first of all jabs. Vaccinations for medics in Madrid have been halted too.
Italy and Poland have threatened to have legal actions in response to the decrease in vaccines.
Meanwhile, cases in lots of European countries happen to be surging. Germany has reached 50,000 Covid deaths and Spain provides experienced record infections in new weeks.
Hungary's government, which includes complained at gradual EU approval of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, has reached a manage Russia to buy up large quantities of the Sputnik V vaccine, though it has not received EU approval.
