AstraZeneca will deliver only a third of the vaccines it promised to the European Union, and Croatia will try and offset the shortage with additional Pfizer vaccine doses, and by the end of summer catch up to the inoculation level of most EU countries, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Wednesday.

We are trying to compensate with Pfizer vaccines that gap caused by AstraZeneca’s failure to deliver all to Croatia in the first two quarters. If that is achieved in adequate quantities then we will compensate that and be on par to the majority of Union member states before the summer. That is our aim, Plenkovic said at a press conference.

He resolutely rejected a statement by President Milanovic that ordering AstraZeneca’s vaccine “was done badly and via connections,” describing that as “misinformation and spin.”

He explained that no one could have foreseen that AstraZeneca would run into problems in its production and delivery process. At the time that Croatia ordered their vaccine at the end of summer last year, the company was the first in research and the first one that the European Commission launched talks with related to orders.

“That is why we pre-ordered the largest quantity from them because we wanted to receive the vaccine as soon as possible,” he said.

“The quantity of orders from individual producers was estimated by expert services in the Croatian Institute for Public Health and the Health Ministry. If we have 2.7 million doses ordered from AstraZeneca, we need another one million doses from Pfizer, one million from Moderna and one million from Johnson&Johnson… After that we increased the order from Pfizer several times, for us now to get to 2.7 million of the Pfizer vaccine and we are seeking more. That means we are trying to resolve the problem,” said Plenkovic.

He said that it was “theoretically true,” that we would have a better rate of inoculation had we booked more of the Pfizer vaccine but that no one could have foreseen the problems with AstraZeneca.