Italian police inspect a factory with millions of doses of AstraZeneca

  • 2021-03-24
Italian police inspect a factory with millions of doses of AstraZeneca

The Italian police carried out an inspection at a pharmaceutical factory near the capital, Rome, where millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine against the Coronavirus were found.

An EU official confirmed that 29 million doses were found at the Italian site run by the "Catalinet" company. The vaccine stocks were to be directed to Belgium, according to a statement issued by the office of Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

And Bloomberg News quoted the Italian daily La Stampa earlier today, Wednesday, that it is possible that the 29 million doses are ready for export to the United Kingdom, which is twice the amount received by the European Union so far. The newspaper mentioned that at least some of these doses were produced by the "Halex" company, which was subcontracted to AstraZeneca, in the Netherlands.

Earlier today, the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca revealed that there were millions of doses of the Corona vaccine in a factory in Italy, which were produced outside the European Union.

The company indicated 13 million doses of Corona vaccines in the "Ajnani" factory in Italy, awaiting a quality control decision to release them and send them to the "Kovacs" program of the World Health Organization, to provide vaccines to middle and low-income countries.

In an email to Bloomberg News, AstraZeneca indicated that another 16 million vaccine doses are also awaiting a quality control decision, to be sent to Europe. Ten million of these doses are to be sent to the European Union during the last week of March.

The company confirmed that these vaccines were produced outside the European Union, and were brought to the Italian factory only for packaging.

"There are no other export plans currently in place," the company said in a statement, "to clarify some of the inaccurate data." Italy confirmed that it had started an inspection at the site at the request of the European Commission.

The European official, who requested anonymity, said that the inspection results prove that AstraZeneca has a higher ability to deliver vaccines, when pressure is applied to it.