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(Adds AstraZeneca CEO comments)
By Philip Blenkinsop and Alistair Smout
BRUSSELS, Jan 29 (Reuters) - The European Commission's
contract with AstraZeneca to supply COVID-19 vaccines
includes Britain along with the EU as places where the
Anglo-Swedish drugmaker should make its best efforts to
manufacture vaccines for the EU.
The contract is at the heart of a dispute over access to
vaccines, after AstraZeneca announced last week it would fall
short of delivering promised vaccines to the EU by March because
of production problems in Belgium.
Speaking after European medical regulators approved the
vaccine, AstraZeneca Chief Executive Pascal Soriot said
manufacturing glitches were inevitable and the company was
focused on boosting supplies to the bloc after resolving most of
the issues.
Seeking to defuse the row, Soriot said there were millions
of doses ready to be shipped to EU countries. The company was
working to increase capacity from the projected 31 million doses
in the first quarter, using drug substance taken from other
parts of the world, he added.
AstraZeneca and the EU had signed a deal for up to 400
million doses of the vaccine. Last week, the firm unexpectedly
announced cuts of up to 60% in supplies to the bloc, citing
production problems at a Belgian factory, triggering a furious
response from the bloc.
The EU is now looking into a scheme to monitor and authorise
export of vaccines, potentially blocking them if its own supply
is not met.
The EU, whose member states are far behind Israel, Britain
and the United States in rolling out vaccines, is standing its
ground, pressing the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker to deliver the
doses as promised in the contract.
AstraZeneca has been making large quantities of its vaccine
in Britain, but has said a contract it signed with the British
government requires it to fulfil Britain's order before it can
send doses manufactured there abroad, including to the EU.
The company agreed on Friday to publication of its advance
purchase agreement with the European Commission. The 41-page
contract was published https://bit.ly/2MBIaoU, although certain
parts were redacted.
The contract says that AstraZeneca must uses its "Best
Reasonable Efforts" to manufacture the EU doses, but the parties
disagree on what this means.
AstraZeneca's contention is that this is more of a
subjective assessment, but a commission official said on Friday
it was an objective legal standard.
The official pointed to a sentence in the contract by which
AstraZeneca says it is not under any obligation to others that
would impede complete fulfilment of the agreement's
requirements.
The commission also contends it does have the right to doses
made in Britain and refers to a section at the end of the
contract listing two British production sites.
"AstraZeneca shall use its Best Reasonable Efforts to
manufacture the vaccine at manufacturing sites located within
the EU (which for the purpose of this Section 5.4 only shall
include the United Kingdom)," the contract says in a section on
manufacturing sites.
The contract does not say whether AstraZeneca is obliged to
send vaccines produced in Britain to the European Union.
Soriot stressed the progress AstraZeneca had made in
producing a vaccine in less than a year.
"It is not simple, it is very complicated," Soriot said.
"We've had issues that led to us not producing (what) we were
hoping to produce, but we're trying to really catch up and you
know there's not much more we can do."
(Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop, John Chalmers and Francesco
Guarascio in Brussels, Alistair Smout in London and Pushkala
Aripaka in Bengaluru
Editing by John Chalmers Nick Macfie and Keith Weir)
