‘Highly probable’ EU won’t renew AstraZeneca or J&J Covid-19 vaccine contract, French minister says

France’s minister for industry has said she thinks it will be highly unlikely that the EU will seek new contracts with AstraZeneca and J&J for their Covid vaccines, but says discussions with Pfizer and Moderna have already begun.

Speaking on Friday to BFMTV, Minister for Industry Agnes Pannier-Runacher gave a frank assessment of the EU’s attitude toward vaccines produced by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.

“The decision is not clear today but I can tell you that we have not started discussions with AstraZeneca and with Johnson & Johnson for a new contract, where we have already started discussions for contracts with BioNTech / Pfizer and with Moderna,” Pannier-Runacher said.

She added that it was “highly probable” that the EU would choose not to renew contracts with AstraZeneca or with Johnson & Johnson. 

On Wednesday, the head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen announced that EU states would receive 50 million more Covid-19 vaccines produced by Pfizer than planned during the second quarter of 2021. 

In her speech, von der Leyen underlined the EU’s commitment to “focus on the technologies that have proven their worth,” in what was a probable reference to the fact that the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines use a different type of vaccine technology to the Pfizer and Moderna jabs.

She said that negotiations were underway for a third contract with Pfizer, which would “foresee the delivery of 1.8 billion additional vaccine doses in 2021-2023.”

Both the AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines have been linked to rare cases of blood clotting, which in some cases were fatal. Brussels has also been highly critical of AstraZeneca’s supply issues, with one EU lawmaker likening the firm to an “unreliable second-hand car salesman.” 

A number of EU countries have restricted the use of the Anglo-Swedish jab, while Denmark has stopped using it completely. J&J’s rollout is yet to begin in the 27-nation bloc and the start date has been suspended while a review takes place.

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