Croatia is proposing a more equitable manner for the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines, the Jutarnji List daily reported on Monday.

The fairer scheme should be based solely on the vaccine-to-population ratio, rather than taking into consideration how many doses a country has ordered from producers.

The discrepancies seem to arise from the fact that the current distribution model takes into account both the size of a country’s population and the amount of doses ordered.

The first two vaccines approved by the European Union are Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna and the countries that ordered the largest quantities of them have been given the largest supplies, which has resulted in discrepancies.

Countries such as Croatia, which have pre-ordered more doses of AstraZeneca/Oxford, have been shortchanged since this vaccine was approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) later on. To make things worse, this producer has so far delivered fewer shots than it promised. In the first quarter of 2021, it delivered 30 million doses to the EU, instead of 90 million it had initially pledged, according to Jutarnji List.

If the EU grants Croatia’s request that the key to the distribution of vaccines should be solely the vaccin- to-population ratio, then the brand of the vaccine would not matter any more.

On Saturday, the prime ministers of six EU member states, including Croatia, urged the European Union institutions’ leaders to discuss the simultaneous distribution of COVID vaccines on a pro rata/population basis.

“We have agreed to join forces in this endeavour because we know that we are stronger together as the EU and because no one in the EU will be safe from the coronavirus before everyone is safe,” the prime ministers of Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Latvia and Slovenia wrote in their joint letter sent to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel.

The signatories of the letter, including Croatia’s Andrej Plenkovic, point to the conclusions of the European Council meeting of 21 January when leaders “reaffirmed that vaccines should be distributed at the same time and must be on a pro rata/population basis.”