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(Adds Breton on Astra U.S. factory)
By Francesco Guarascio
SENEFFE, Feb 10 (Reuters) - A plant in Belgium said to be
the main cause of big cuts in AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine
supplies to the European Union said on Wednesday it had complied
with all its obligations under a contract it has with the
Anglo-Swedish firm.
The apparent dispute could lead to further EU pressure on
AstraZeneca to deliver more doses in the winter, as its
COVID-19 vaccine began being rolled out in the 27-nation bloc
this week.
The factory, which U.S. firm Thermo Fisher acquired
from Novasep in January, has been identified as the cause of the
cuts by AstraZeneca in internal meetings, several EU
officials have said.
"We have complied with all the contractual requirements we
have with AstraZeneca," Thermo Fisher's vice president for the
EU, Cedric Volanti, told a news conference on Wednesday, when
asked about possible production problems the plant had faced.
AstraZeneca on Jan. 15 announced cuts in its supply of
vaccines to the EU in the first quarter, which EU officials said
amounted to a 60% reduction to 31 million doses through March.
The company declined to comment on Wednesday on Thermo
Fisher's remarks. In a public statement it had said the drop in
expected doses was caused by a lower than anticipated yield, or
the amount of vaccine that can be made from base ingredients.
EU officials repeatedly said AstraZeneca had told them that
the problem had been caused by production issues at the factory
in Belgium.
Volanti declined to comment on the number of doses the
company has committed to producing for AstraZeneca and
underscored that the change of ownership had had no negative
impact on the production capacity of the factory.
When asked whether the Belgian plant, located in Seneffe at
an hour drive from Brussels, sold doses to Britain, Volanti said
the company sends vaccines to an Italian facility that bottles
them before delivering to clients.
EU Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton, who leads an EU
task force to expand COVID-19 vaccine production, said he was
confident about the production capacity of the Thermo Fisher
plant.
LOW TARGET
After the supply cut announced in January, which followed an
earlier downward revision of its initial 120 million-dose
delivery target for the first quarter, AstraZeneca raised its
commitment to the EU to 40 million doses through March from 31
million.
The company has never said from where the additional doses
would come.
The EU has said that increase was a positive first step, but
urged the company to further ramp up its immediate deliveries to
the bloc, which has a contract for 300 million doses and options
for another 100 million.
In meetings with the EU, AstraZeneca said it could not send
doses from factories in Britain because of contractual
obligations to London.
Breton declined to comment on whether AstraZeneca could
further raise deliveries by the end of March, but said output
from a factory producing COVID-19 vaccines for AstraZeneca in
the United States would go "almost entirely" to Europe.
The Commission had so far said that doses for the EU were
meant to come from four factories, one each in Belgium and
Germany and two in Britain.
Separately on Wednesday, AstraZeneca announced a partnership
with German firm IDT Biologika to speed up output of finished
COVID-19 vaccine in the second quarter.
(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio @fraguarascio; additional
reporting by Ludwig Burger; Editing by John Stonestreet, Elaine
Hardcastle and Jan Harvey)
