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PARIS, March 24 (Reuters) - European leaders failed to see
that COVID-19 vaccines would be developed as soon as they were
and this was why rollouts in the EU now lagged behind some other
countries, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview
broadcast on Wednesday.
"Everybody, all the experts said: Never in the history of
mankind was a vaccine developed in less than a year," Macron
told Greek television channel ERT.
"We didn't shoot for the stars. That should be a lesson for
all of us. We were wrong to lack ambition, to lack the madness,
I would say, to say: It's possible, let's do it," Macron said,
in a rare admission of failure in the pandemic.
European Union leaders are struggling to speed up
vaccinations, trailing countries like Britain and the United
Sattes and facing supply delays.
Macron himself has been criticised at home for a faltering
rollout which has been slowed by bureaucracy and public mistrust
of vaccines.
"We didn't think it would happen that quickly... You can
give that to the Americans, as early as the summer of 2020 they
said: let's pull out all the stops and do it," Macron said.
"As far as we're concerned, we didn't go fast enough, strong
enough on this. We thought the vaccines would take time to take
off."
The EU tightened its oversight of coronavirus vaccine
exports on Wednesday, giving it greater scope to block shipments
to countries with higher inoculation rates such as Britain, or
which are not sharing doses they produce.
(Reporting by Michel Rose; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
