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article_detail
Date Published: 17/02/2021
ARCHIVED - Spain orders extra Pfizer vaccines as Moderna halves its supply this month
Further complications for the plan to immunize 70 per cent of the population by September
The efforts being made by Spain’s Ministry of Health to solve the coronavirus vaccine supply problems and accelerate the campaign to immunize at least 70 per cent of the population continue to be frustrated, and in response it was announced on Tuesday that an extra order is being placed with the Pfizer-BioNTech consortium.
Earlier in this week Moderna revealed that modifications to its production process will force it to cut its planned vaccine deliveries to the EU by around half over the coming weeks, as a result of which its weekly deliveries to Spain this month will fall from the planned 383,900 to approximately 200,000.
Against this backdrop, and facing another delay in getting mass vaccination up and running on a scale which would make the 70 per cent immunization target feasible by the end of this summer, Cabinet has approved the purchase of a further 20.8 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine. This decision is justified not only on the grounds of the doubts over supplies from Moderna, but also on account of the uncertainty regarding the number of doses which will be provided by Janssen when their vaccine receives EU approval and doubts over the effectiveness of the Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines in the elderly.
The “extra” order is being made by taking advantage of provisions made for such decisions within the agreements already made by the EU with Pfizer, and of the 20.8 million doses concerned 7.8 million are to reach Spain in the second quarter of the year, a further 7.8 million in the third quarter and the remaining 5.2 million in the last three months of 2021. They are thus added to the 30 million doses which were already expected from Pfizer, and in all they will make it possible to immunize some 26 million people – or around 57 per cent of the population of Spain.
This continues the dependence on Pfizer to provide the bulk of the vaccines used in Spain: to date, of the 2.91 million doses received the company accounts for over 86.5 per cent. However, Moderna have issued assurances that the cut in productivity in February is being made in order to improve matters in March, and that the “lost” deliveries will be forthcoming in March as production is increased – a similar delay was made by Pfizer in January.
In the meantime, it appears likely that those Moderna vials which are delivered this month will be used mainly to supply the second dose to people who have already received their initial jab, rather than reaching new groups of the population.
Prior to the reduction in the batches sent by Moderna the projection was that by the end of this month Spain would have received just over 4 million doses and that the figure would rise to over 8 million during the spring. The government’s aim to reach 70 per cent of the population by late September implies the need for 57 million doses to be administered to over 33 million people so that what is considered an acceptable level of herd immunity can be achieved.
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