Since being in charge of the industrial component of the European vaccination strategy against Covid-19, Thierry Breton has been on all fronts. With one obsession: to find factories, or production lines, to increase the number of doses manufactured in Europe. In two months, the former Minister of the Economy of Jacques Chirac has increased the number of trips to the four corners of the continent – he has already been to Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Denmark, Latvia, in Estonia, Spain and Portugal – in order to identify and meet the players in the sector, large and small, but also those whose skills can be put to the service of its mission.
On Monday March 29 and Wednesday March 31, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market set up a temporary meeting site, on which more than 300 healthcare manufacturers from 25 Member States – only Cyprus and Slovakia were not represented – were able to visit (virtually) and get in touch.
It contains everything that vaccine production requires skills at every step of a complex process, from active substance specialists to vaccine vials, including packaging producers. This “Event aims to promote new connections and new partnerships throughout the production and supply chain. I encourage the many companies involved in the vaccine manufacturing process to make the most of the networking opportunities ”, explains Thierry Breton.
The Twenty-Seven are still sorely lacking in doses
If the laboratories have succeeded in developing vaccines at high speed – in nine months, when, traditionally, it takes at least five years -, they have not been able to adapt their industrial tool quickly enough to allow Europeans to vaccinate in turn. of arms. As Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said to the European Parliament on February 10, “Science has overtaken industry”.
Today, the Twenty-Seven have at their disposal four vaccines which have been authorized by the European Medicines Agency – Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and, for a few days, Johnson & Johnson, whose deliveries are expected to start on the 19th. April – but, beyond their own logistical difficulties in organizing effective vaccination campaigns, they are still sorely lacking in doses. And the goal that Brussels has set itself – to provide them with enough to immunize 70% of adults by the summer – still seems a long way off.
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