BERLIN • Germany may miss its target to donate 100 million Covid-19 vaccine doses this year due to conditions imposed by manufacturers and delivery shortfalls, a Health Ministry official said in a letter to Brussels, seen by Reuters.

The 100 million doses account for half the total promised by European Union member states to poorer countries this year, according to the European Commission.

The German Foreign Office said that Germany had donated just over 17 per cent of that amount.

In a letter on Monday to the European Commission's Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority, Health Ministry state secretary Thomas Steffen said there were "ongoing bureaucratic, logistical and legal problems" imposed by vaccine-makers on EU countries wanting to donate surplus shots.

He said these factors made "a quick response to international requests for help almost impossible". The letter is the strongest sign yet of the tensions between governments and drug-makers over donations.

The EU and rich countries, most of whose most vulnerable citizens have been vaccinated, are under pressure from the World Health Organisation to deliver more doses to poorer nations.

"With vaccine surpluses in many member states increasing at present, we will soon be facing a situation of global allocation emergency," Mr Steffen wrote. "Some countries could be forced to waste large volumes of valuable vaccines urgently needed in other parts of the world."

He said obstacles included minimum sales prices, onerous compensation payments required of recipient countries and restrictions on distributing to international organisations.

REUTERS