Astrazeneca Share News (AZN)

(Sharecast News) - Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca cut its supply forecast of Covid-19 vaccine to the European Union in the first quarter to about 30m doses.


That amount would only be a third of its initial contractual obligations and 25% less than the revised pledges made just last month, a document seen by Reuters revealed on Friday.

Dated 10 March, and with just over two weeks left in the quarter, the document showed that the company expected to deliver 30.1m doses by the end of March and another 20m in April. As recently as February, AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot had said that the company would try to deliver 40m doses by the end of this month.

The contracted target for the EU from January to March was originally 90m doses. At the time, AstraZeneca had also committed to supplying the 27-nation bloc with 180m doses between April and June.

A person close to the matter added that the difference between expected deliveries for the first quarter and the contractual obligations could be due to the fact that the company had faced difficulties in moving vaccines through its global supply chains.

It also attributed the reduction in supplies to the EU to production problems at its facilities within the bloc.

The EU has been having a hard time trying to meet its vaccination plans, not least due to repeated delays in supplies, on top of different systems for rollout in each of its member countries country.

EU industry commissioner Thierry Breton said on Twitter late on Thursday: "It's time for AstraZeneca's Board to exercise its fiduciary responsibility and now do what it takes to fulfil AZ's commitments."

Further aggravating the EU's efforts to secure enough vaccine supplies, on Thursday, Washington reportedly told the EU that it should not expect to receive AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines manufactured in the US any time soon.

According to sources from the EU directly involved in the negotiations "the US said there was no way it would ship AstraZeneca vaccines to the EU".

Nonetheless, Margaret Cekuta, a former US trade official who is now a lobbyist for Capital Counsel, reportedly told Reuters that the US could not export those doses to the EU because the vaccine had yet to be approved in the US, which could results in legal liabilities.

Separately, citing documents from one EU government to which it had access, Bloomberg reported that by extrapolating those national figures to the EU level, it appeared that AstraZeneca would only deliver approximately 76m doses to the EU during the second quarter.

Here too however, previous reports had already been pointing to the possibility that actual supplies would be reduced by half from the contractually stipulated 180m doses.

To take note of, Reuters also reported that the needed certification of any supplies from India was also proceeding very slowly.