Australia urges EU to supply outstanding vaccine doses

By Shifaan Ryklief On Apr 7, 2021

Australia has called on the European Union to supply its 3.1 million AstraZeneca doses it has not yet received.

Bottles of vaccine. — Australia is waiting on 3.1 million outstanding contracted vaccine doses from the European Union. Image by: Open Content

CAPE TOWN, April 7 (ANA) – Australia is running short on Covid-19 vaccine doses and has called on the European Union (EU) to supply its 3.1 million AstraZeneca doses it has not yet received.

According to the BBC, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a press conference on Wednesday that the matter of supply was “straightforward maths”.

He added that the European Commission has also not responded to the request to deliver to Papua New Guinea the one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine requested last month.

“3.1 million out of 3.8 million doses did not come to Australia. That obviously had a very significant impact on the early roll-out of the vaccination programme,” Morrison said.

“I am pleased to hear that the European Union overnight has indicated that they are not seeking to restrict these vaccines to Australia,” he added.

Meanwhile, the European Commission said in an earlier press statement on Tuesday that only a shipment of 250,000 vaccine doses earmarked for Australia was rejected in March.

Last week, Australia failed to deliver on its four-million vaccination target by the end of March and only managed to vaccinate 670,000 people, with authorities saying the roll-out was not urgent due to the country’s low infection rate.

The Guardian reported that the Italian government had blocked the export of the 250,000 doses due to Australia being classified as “a non-vulnerable country”, coupled with vaccine shortages.

AstraZeneca agreed to provide the EU with 120 million vaccine doses in the first quarter of 2021 but was only able to commit to 40 million.

Meanwhile, Australia and New Zealand have agreed to a trans-Tasman travel bubble which allows quarantine-free travel between the two countries.

The announcement was made during a press conference on Tuesday and will come into effect from April 19.

– African News Agency (ANA); Editing by Yaron Blecher