AstraZeneca PLC (LON:AZN) chief executive Pascal Soriot fired back at the European Union saying it had not over-promised delivery and he was proud of the pharma’s work on the Covid-19 vaccine.
“Imagine without our vaccine what India would look like. Imagine if we had not stepped up, imagine if we had said no," Soriot told journalists in a conference after its first-quarter results.
"We have made an enormous difference," Soriot said, adding its vaccine makes up 90% of what is available in India.
AstraZeneca was in court defending itself this week after the EU launched legal action over what it claims was the company’s failure to deliver on a contract for the supply of vaccines.
AstraZeneca bullish on outlook as no-profit COVID-19 vaccine delivers US$275mln quarterly sales
Soriot said the company did its best to deliver as much as it could to the EU and was disappointed it could not have delivered more.
"We never overpromised, we communicated what we thought we would achieve at the time," he said, though he admitted it was still way behind what it had expected to have delivered.
By the end of April, AstraZeneca will have sent 50mln doses to he said, which will rise to 100mln by end-June.
The contract with the EU had been for 300 million doses to have been delivered by then.
The situation is further complicated by some European countries now refusing to administer the vaccine to young people because of blood clot fears.
The Netherlands suspended its use for the under 60s a month ago and recently said that it was unlikely to use11mln doses it had received.