COVID vaccines largely unwanted at first: report

Confidential European Commission documents seen by a German media team show a majority of EU member states wanted "traditional" vaccines and were "very little interested" in new-type jabs from BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna.

The novel messenger RNA vaccines from these firms interested "only a small minority of member states" as initial buyers, reported the team, comprising German public broadcasters NDR and WDR, as well as Munich's Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

The report coincided Saturday with a YouGov survey showing 50% of Germans were satisfied by the government's management of the crisis, down from 67% last April and 57% in October.

On Friday, a Reuters' retrospective article depicted a EU Commission in "panic" last month as vaccine delays became public, with Europe already mourning more than 700,000 dead and Brussels having promised 70% adult vaccinations across the EU by the third quarter of 2021.

'Quick' talks slowed

Saturday's report, however, depicts EU negotiators aiming for quick results as talks began last June. That changed when German developer BioNTech was joined by its American partner Pfizer with liability lawyers.

Numerous EU states were also against the new mRNA vaccines because they — and BioNTech's especially — require subzero cooling during transport.

Furthermore, scientific experts advising the EU executive were — until October — "very skeptical" toward all forms of mRNA usage, intended to immunize human cells against the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes COVID-19.

A further argument touted in Germany was that compared to jabs from Britain's AstraZeneca, the other mRNA vaccines were priced higher.

Senior German official 'involved'

And, contrary to disclaimers, a German ministry director — a medicines expert reporting to Health Minister Jens Spahn — was involved from June in those negotiations, led by an EU "steering board" chaired by the Commission's director general for health, Sandra Gallina of Italy, and Austria's Clemens Auer.

Members of the steering group were constantly in contact via the WhatsApp messaging service and consulted every Friday at midday on the latest status of the talks, the media team learned from an inside source.

Blocking a quick agreement, said Auer, were demands from pharmaceutical firms that the Commission free them largely from liability — a key factor in medication development, given tragedies such as Thalidomide scandal in the 1960s, which caused birth defects.

"We started negotiating with BioNTech, and at some point Pfizer got involved, and then all of a sudden there were American lawyers at the table," Auer is quoted as saying in the report. "That didn't make it any easier."

Pricing, liability

One firm, unnamed in Saturday's report, argued that given its planned delivery at near-cost and little profit, then liability risk should be considered in the pricing.

Another firm wanted the EU to at least cover legal costs if future lawsuits from claimants proved to be unjustified.

As this became known, lead negotiator Gallina was quizzed on liability at a European Parliament hearing in mid-January and promised patient rights would not be trimmed.

Gallina rejects accusations

Earlier this week, Gallina rejected accusations that EU citizens are now having to wait longer for vaccines because the Commission had opted to save on expenditure or insisted on compliance with existing law.

Firms like BioNTech and AstraZeneca had already received hundreds of millions of euros to ramp up production before contracts were signed, she noted.

More doses would not have been received had the EU paid more, she insisted, apparently borne out Saturday in a magazine report in Der Spiegel citing BioNTech's financial chief Sierk Poetting: "More money wouldn't have helped us last year."

"We had to set up the production process, by and large," he told Spiegel, adding: "But now money would help, especially if we are supposed to anticipate a capacity of 3 billion doses, as was requested this week."

Reuters in its analysis said January's "two weeks of confusion" over the EU's initial vaccine supplies amounted to the 27-nation bloc's "deepest crisis" since Ursula von der Leyen became president of the European Commission just over a year ago.

ipj/shs (Reuters, dpa)