European countries turning to East for vaccines amid supply shortage

FASTER PACE

An EU summit on Thursday stressed the need to urgently accelerate the authorization, production and distribution of vaccines, as well as inoculation.

To date, 51.5 million doses have so far been delivered across the EU and 29.17 million administered, with about 5 percent of citizens having had their first dose, according to data released by the EU.

With speeding up the production and delivery of vaccines being the top priority, the EU chief encouraged the executive to work with medical industries to identify bottlenecks, guarantee supply chains and scale up production, and urged pharmaceutical giants to honor their commitment.

Besides a long wait for increased production to curb supply fluctuations, the world also faces a "catastrophic moral failure" because of unequal COVID-19 vaccine policies, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned, adding it is not fair for "younger, healthy people in richer countries to get injections before vulnerable people in poorer ones."