The doses were discovered during a visit by Italian inspectors to a site near Rome, while the European Union accuses the pharmaceutical company of deliveries significantly lower than expected.
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29 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine were discovered in Italy, near Rome, during an inspection carried out on a site of the Swedish-British pharmaceutical group, the correspondent of Radio France learned on Wednesday March 24 from a source. European high-ranking.
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Italian inspectors made the discovery at the Anagni plant near Rome, one of AstraZeneca’s bottling sites. The discovery comes as a surprise, as the lab keeps saying it can’t fulfill the Europeans’ order, and will only deliver a third of the 90 million doses promised in the first quarter.
AstraZeneca said 16 million of the 30 million doses discovered were destined for Europe, with the remaining 13 earmarked for the Covax device, created to provide the poorest countries with vaccines. The Anglo-Swedish laboratory assured in a press release that these batches were awaiting quality control before being shipped.
According to the same European source, if we add these doses discovered in Italy to those already received by the European Union, we are beyond what the pharmaceutical group said it hoped to produce. Brussels sees this as a lack of transparency from AstraZeneca, the only laboratory that does not honor its commitments. The European Commission decided on Wednesday morning to strengthen its export control system to prevent pre-reserved vaccines from being sold to the highest bidder.
