An Austrian official who chaired the EU Commission’s vaccination advisory board, Clemens Martin Auer, has resigned after the country’s health minister Rudolf Anschober seemingly pointed his fingers at him for the nation’s failure to secure further anti-Covid doses.
It has been reported that the official had failed to inform his government there were millions of extra doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine available to purchase and tendered his own resignation, the minister said, amid discontent over the government’s handling of the inoculation programme.
“This was the fact that it was possible to order extra doses from a reserve pot made up of doses not used by other member states,” Anschober said.
After Kurz’s intervention on Friday, Austria was joined by the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Latvia in demanding talks among EU leaders to address what they called the “huge” disparities in vaccine distribution.
The European Commission responded by saying in a statement that it agreed “that the most equitable solution for the allocation of doses of vaccines is on the basis of a pro rata of population of each member state”.
Via Euronews, EU Observer
