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Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has given “unsatisfactory” answers as to why it can honour its vaccine contracts to the US and the UK but not to the EU, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has said.
He told the Dáil that the company’s failure to honour its commitments is “an enormous problem” for the European Union.
Mr Varadkar said “I’m seeking explanations too because I can understand how AstraZeneca might run into problems with supply, or manufacturing or quality control.
“But I do not understand how this big successful company can honour its contracts with the United States, and honour its contracts to the United Kingdom, but for some reason, not honour its contractual commitments to the European Union.”
There has been trenchant criticisms of the company and Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly had earlier said that it repeatedly revised its delivery schedules and three times in just one seven day period.
Labour leader Alan Kelly said an EU spokesman had said on RTÉ that the European Commission was “talking very strongly” to AstraZeneca but this was an “underwhelming response”.
He called for an EU summit on the issue and asked what action could be taken on the issue.
Mr Varadkar told him that there is a provision to ban exports and Italy had already done this while a council meeting of European leaders is scheduled to deal with the issue issue.
The Tánaiste said he was pro-European and believed in the European project but this did not mean “you can’t criticise the European Commission on occasion. And perhaps this is one of those occasions”.
But he pointed out that Ireland was part of the common European approach and he remembered as taoiseach what it was like to compete with other countries to get PPE, ventilators, swabbing and testing equipment.
Mr Varadkar told the Labour leader that he had spoken to pharma giants Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson because they have a major presence in Ireland. He said the Taoiseach had sought to speak to the CEO of AstraZeneca, which does not have a presence in Ireland, but did not know if that hat happened.
Unacceptable
Mr Donnelly sharply criticised AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine delivery operations as “unacceptable” and said it had repeatedly revised its delivery times “often at the last minute and revising down volumes it had agreed to deliver”.
Mr Donnelly who was speaking during his weekly Dáil update on the vaccine programme rollout hit out at criticism of the HSE and claims that it is missing its Covid-19 vaccination targets. Mr Donnelly said this was unfair and untrue. It was not the HSE missing its targets but AstraZeneca he said of the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company which is one of three vaccine products so (EMA) .
Mr Donnelly said Ireland has in a pre-arranged deal bought 2.91 million doses of the single dose Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) jab which would vaccinate half the population and was approved by the EMA on Thursday.
But he told the Dáil that in the basis of how unreliable AstraZeneca had been he was unwilling to set out delivery and administration targets.
During his weekly update of the vaccination rollout programme the Minister said that side deals done by Germany and Denmark to secure additional doses with pharmaceutical companies outside the EU are for delivery later this year in the October to December quarter.
Amid increasing calls for Ireland to source vaccines from outside the EU and questions about what other member states are doing Mr Donnelly said the Government was not aware of any EU countries doing deals for the delivery of vaccines “in the short-term”.
Covid infection rates for hospital workers have fallen by approximately 95 per cent he said adding that the number of staff in the nursing home sector absent for reasons related to Covid has fallen from several thousand to several hundred and continues to fall.
“The latest serial testing results from the nursing home sector showed a positivity rate of just 0.2 per cent.”
Nursing homes
While consideration is being given to the opening of nursing homes to visitors Minister of State for Health Mary Butler urged caution about rising expectations because 104 homes out of 580 in the State still had outbreaks - more than two cases -of the virus.
But she said that 99 per cent of those over 85 had been vaccinated and completion of vaccination for this group is expected in the next week. All over 70s in the State, some 480,000 people, will be vaccinated by mid-May.
Vaccination of a small final cohort of those 85 and older is under way. Ms Butler said the National Ambulance Service will vaccinate any housebound person over 85 and this has begun today in the greater Dublin area. Vaccination of those with underlying diseases began this week.
Pharmacists are currently being vaccinated as healthcare workers and are expected to be involved in the vaccination of the over 65 age group.
Extend the gap
Extending the gap between doses of Covid-19 vaccines would increase the number of people vaccinated by 40 per cent and could speed up the easing of restrictions the Dáil has been told.
Former minister Richard Bruton, an economist, said that despite the frustration with the “stop go” on vaccines more than 523,000 vaccine doses had been administered up to five days ago, a figure that is closer to 600,000 now.
The Fine Gael chairman said that by the middle of next week all those over 80 will be vaccinated and “that will take out 63 per cent of the risk of fatalities from this virus”.
He asked Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly “should we now consider extending the gap between doses because we would increase the number reached by 40 per cent if we had a longer delay between the doses for the vaccine”.
“From what we hear 80 per cent of the impact is delivered on the first jab and the second jab only add another 10 per cent to 15 per cent in effectiveness”.
He suggested that “de-risking” in this way could change the “trigger points” which will determine the re-opening of society.
“Clearly the risk associated with say, 300 cases a day is very different if 80 per cent of the risk is removed”.
Mr Donnelly said that Ireland now has the fourth lowest number of cases in the EU.
He said the National Immunisation Advisory Committee (Niac), which advises the Chief Medical Officer, is considering the issue.
“There are some concerns with a falloff in effectiveness or levels of protection if the interval is too long,” he warned. Niac is paying attention to this and “if they make any recommendations to us be it on MRNA vaccines or on AstraZeneca then we will certainly look at it”.