Some of the corona vaccines ordered by the European Union will arrive later than Minister De Jonge wrote in his letter to Parliament on Monday. De Jonge then expected 8 million vaccines in the first three months of this year. A tour of the NOS along pharmacists shows that at least 1.1 million doses will come later.
This means that 550,000 Dutch people will be vaccinated later than De Jonge wrote on Monday, because two doses of these vaccines are required per person.
The German company Curevac, for example, states that its vaccine cannot be approved by the European medicines authority EMA until April. De Jonge expected 600,000 doses of this in the first quarter, but they will come later anyway. That was already known on Monday, when De Jonge sent his letter.
A company spokesperson tells NOS that he does not yet know how soon delivery can start after approval, because that schedule has not yet been made. It is not yet clear whether the company can deliver the 1.6 million vaccines that the Ministry of VWS announced for the second quarter.
Less consequences
The extra vaccines ordered from Pfizer-BioNTech will also not arrive before April. The European Commission ordered an additional 100 million vaccines at the end of December. De Jonge informed the House that 500,000 of these would already end up in the Netherlands in March. Pfizer contradicts this and says it will be able to deliver in April at the earliest. A spokesman for the European Commission even assumes July.
Minister De Jonge is also too optimistic in his letter about the vaccine from the French producer Sanofi, although that will have fewer consequences in the short term. The minister assumed that Sanofi could deliver 5.85 million doses of its vaccine to the Netherlands from July to September. But the company itself tells the NOS that it assumes that this will be in October at the earliest.
No surprise
It should come as no surprise to the ministry that Sanofi will not be ready with the vaccine by the third quarter of this year. The company announced in mid-December that the initial results of tests with the vaccine were not showing good results, causing delays in its development.
De Jonge does write in his letter to Parliament that “changes to the delivery schedule are possible until the last minute”. So there may be other windfalls or setbacks in the coming months. But the setbacks surrounding the delivery of the vaccines from Curevac, Pfizer and Sanofi were already known when the minister wrote his letter.
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