Supreme Audit Office on vaccines against COVID-19

The procurement of vaccines against COVID-19 appears to have been non-transparent. Based on its audit, the Supreme Audit Office further informed that the contract concluded centrally by the European Commission was beneficial only for a private company. Most of the countries of the European Union contracted many more vaccine doses than necessary.

Slovak auditors claim that the purchase was not only poorly transparent but also uneconomic. The head of the Supreme Audit Office, Ľubomír Andrassy, says countries used less than half of the vaccines, while Slovakia contracted and paid for 15 million doses.

„However, out of these, Slovakia used less than 47% for vaccinating its citizens which means we used 7 million vaccines,“ he informed.

The purchase of vaccines and the later disposal of almost five million doses cost Slovakia more than €340 million in total, which the Audit Office describes as a waste. The Commission's representation in Slovakia points out that the Commission negotiated the contract with the states on the basis of their needs. However, the states did not have to join the union scheme - Marek Krajčí of the opposition movement Slovakia, who headed the health ministry, explains that this was not an option at the time: „With such a huge volume that the pharmaceutical companies had contracted with the European Commission, the deliveries would have been much, much later. Or those deliveries would have been totally overpriced.“

INESS analyst Martin Vlachynský says that the responsibility is on both sides, but adds: „Hindsight is a bit skewed by the fact that we already know how it turned out. The decision in the end was not a good one, but I understand the view that we should go all in rather than regret it afterwards.“ 

The auditors also pointed out that the state lacked a crisis plan to determine the right steps to take during a pandemic. They therefore called for its creation. Andrej Wallner responds on behalf of the Health Ministry: „The Department is working to correct the deficiencies following the Office's findings.“

Source: TASR, Slovak Radio