Participation of the Commission at the vaccine summit hosted by Chancellor Merkel. German Chancellor Angela Merkel hosted high-stakes talks with EU officials and Covid-19 vaccine makers Monday as fury grows over the continent's sluggish inoculation campaign. https://www.eudebates.tv/debates/eu-policies/business-eu-policies/eu-astrazeneca-logic-can-only-work-at-the-neighbourhood-butchers/

Merkel has come under criticism over her decision to let the European Commission take the lead in securing vaccines for the bloc, as delays have dogged both procurement and rollout of the jabs across the 27-nation club.

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In a bid to speed things up, Merkel has convened an online "summit" bringing together senior cabinet members, the EU commissioners for the internal market and health as well as key pharma companies including BioNTech, Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, CureVac and Johnson & Johnson.

The talks started at around 1300 GMT and Merkel is due to hold a press conference afterwards.

Health Minister Jens Spahn urged Germans to keep their expectations in check however.

"A summit alone won't be enough to produce more vaccines," he said late Sunday, noting the complexity of the manufacturing process.

"That's why it can't just happen in three or five weeks."

- Fresh pledges -

But as political pressure mounted on the pharmaceutical companies, which received millions of euros in public investment to produce the vaccines, they unleashed a flurry of new pledges for quicker deliveries.

BioNTech and Pfizer, the first firms worldwide to announce a successful vaccine, promised to send up to 75 million extra doses to the bloc in the spring thanks to progress at key manufacturing sites.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said Sunday that AstraZeneca would finally deliver 40 million doses in total in the first quarter -- nine million doses or 30 percent more than it had previously said it could.

An EU source said the first deliveries would start in the second week of February.

And chemicals giant Bayer announced that from 2022 it would produce a coronavirus vaccine that fellow German pharmaceuticals company CureVac is developing.

CureVac CEO Franz-Werner Haas said his company would also produce several hundred million doses of its own vaccine by the end of 2021.

CureVac's mRNA vaccine has yet to receive the green light from regulators, but Spahn said it was "on its way to approval in the coming weeks".

French pharma group Sanofi agreed last week to help produce 125 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

- 'Where government can help' -

As fatigue from shutdown measures to curb the spread of the virus grows, Merkel last month pledged to make jabs available to everyone in Germany who wants one by late September.