EU leaders battle twin Covid threats as pandemic reaches ‘critical stage’

The EU’s efforts to combat Covid-19 have reached a perilous point, with pressure mounting on both the bloc’s offensive and defensive strategies as its leaders prepared for talks on Thursday.

Countries are grappling with squeezed vaccine supplies needed to clamp down on the virus while scrambling to protect themselves against apparently more contagious coronavirus variants — including one identified in the UK. “We are at a critical stage,” warned one EU official.

It is a measure of the troubling degree of the latest developments that the fight against the pandemic will dominate Thursday’s online gathering of heads of state and government. Charles Michel, European Council president, has asked leaders to share “best practices” for how they are combating coronavirus and implementing vaccination programmes.

The new virus strains have put the bloc on high alert and revived debate about whether to tighten travel restrictions. While there is widespread reluctance to close borders within the 31-country free movement zone comprising the EU27, Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Iceland, member states are reviewing options to toughen quarantines and testing, border checks and access from third countries.

The telesummit will also focus on disruptions to vaccine rollouts and deliveries, notably Pfizer’s surprise announcement on Friday that supplies of the pioneering jab it developed with Germany’s BioNTech would be cut temporarily this week. The company insisted the shortfall will be made up soon and is happening to allow expanded production later in the year.

Chart showing UK vaccine procurement strategies showing doses US, UK and EU vaccine portfolios

At the same time, EU member states and the European Commission are locked in talks with pharmaceutical companies over how to deal with a separate reduction in the number of vials they deliver to cover their orders. This follows a ruling this month by the bloc’s medical regulator that six doses can be extracted from each capsule rather than five, after health professionals found there was often vaccine left over. But husbanding the half dozen shots requires a special kind of syringe, which the companies and their customers are now haggling over how to source.

Another contentious point will be a proposal by Greece to create a vaccine passport to ease travel around the EU. While Athens thinks the document might help it avert a washout summer tourism season, the idea has triggered anxiety in many other countries because it could divide privileged mobile vaccine “haves” from stymied “have-nots”.

It is also not clear yet whether people who have received the vaccine might still be Covid-19 contagious, casting doubt on how helpful any certificate on its own would be.

The idea is to start discussing common standards for the passport on Thursday, but officials stress that debate is at an early stage — and warn that there are other, more pressing topics on the increasingly forbidding agenda.

Chart du jour: Portugal’s unwanted record

New deaths attributed to Covid-19 in Portugal, EU, UK, France and Spain, Seven-day rolling average of new deaths (per 100,000)

Portugal has suffered surging infection rates since the start of the year, recording the highest number of cases per 100,000 people in the world last week. It has led health experts to criticise the socialist government for easing lockdown measures too far during the Christmas period. (FT)

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