Taiwan directly accused China for the first time on May 26 of blocking a deal with Germany’s BioNTech SE for Covid-19 vaccines, in an escalating war of words after Beijing offered the shots to the island via a Chinese company.
A lawyer for the European Union accused AstraZeneca on May 26 of failing to respect the company’s contract with the 27-nation bloc for the supply of Covid-19 vaccines and asked a Belgian court to impose a large fine on the Anglo-Swedish drug firm.
The European Union expects to have received more than a billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines by the end of September from four drugmakers, according to a document presented to EU leaders on Tuesday.
The Covid-19 vaccine of AstraZeneca Plc and Oxford University works well as a third booster dose, stepping up antibodies to the coronavirus spike protein among participants in a study, the Financial Times said on May 19.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on May 12 for the need to double the capacity of Covid-19 vaccine production and for fairer redistribution of the shots in the developing world, which faces new waves of the coronavirus.
A new global system should be set up to respond faster to disease outbreaks, which could ensure that no future virus causes a pandemic as devastating as Covid-19, an independent World Health Organization review panel said on May 12.
The European Commission called on May 7 on the United States and other major Covid-19 vaccine producers to export what they make as the European Union does, rather than talk about waiving intellectual property rights to the shots.
The European Union on May 6 backed a U.S. proposal to discuss waiving patent protections for Covid-19 vaccines, but drugmakers and some other governments opposed the idea, saying it would not solve global inoculation shortages.
AstraZeneca on April 26 said that legal action by the European Union against the pharmaceutical company over the supply of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine was without merit and pledged to defend itself strongly in court.
The European Commission is working on legal proceedings against AstraZeneca after the drugmaker cut Covid-19 vaccine deliveries to the European Union, sources familiar with the matter said.
