EU mis­tak­en­ly leaves key parts of As­traZeneca Covid-19 con­tract unredact­ed, re­veal­ing costs and So­ri­ot's 'best-ef­fort' claim

Ten­sions be­tween As­traZeneca and the EU re­gard­ing slowed vac­cine roll­out boiled over last week, when the bloc pub­lished a heav­i­ly redact­ed ver­sion of the com­pa­ny’s con­tract fol­low­ing crit­i­cism of its “best-ef­fort” pledges. But ea­gle-eyed in­ter­net sleuths and Ger­man jour­nal­ists found the blacked-out sec­tions could be eas­i­ly re­moved, prompt­ing the EU to pub­licly apol­o­gize.

Among the most note­wor­thy find­ings was that the con­tract it­self is worth £870 mil­lion, or about $1.19 bil­lion for the 300 mil­lion dos­es, in­clud­ing all di­rect and in­di­rect costs. There was al­so a par­tial­ly cut-off sec­tion that de­tailed how even though As­traZeneca is ob­lig­at­ed to sup­ply its dos­es at no prof­it, the com­pa­ny “shall not be re­quest­ed or re­quired to sup­ply the Vac­cine Dose…”

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