The European Union has blocked shipments of 3.1 million doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to Australia. This was reported by an Australian government source, according to reports from the Reuters news agency exclusively on its website. To date, Australia had only confirmed the blockade of 250,000 doses of AstraZeneca from the EU.
The news of the blockade has not been officially confirmed by either the EU or Australia but the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, said that due to the missed shipments, the vaccination campaign is suffering delays: “At the beginning of January we predicted that we would had 3.1 million vaccines. Those vaccines were not supplied to Australia, ”Morrison told reporters in Canberra, according to Reuters.
The doses of AstraZeneca arriving from Europe were to support the early stages of the Australian vaccination campaign, integrating 50 million doses that will be produced locally by the CSL company.