“Desperate” EU nations are beginning to take “pitches from around the world at often exorbitant prices”, The New York Times reports, with Russia and China offering vaccines alongside a “murky open market” where EU leaders are “unsure of the sellers and the products”. As the bloc’s powerhouses increasingly fall behind in their efforts to vaccinate their populations, the race to secure enough doses is ramping up, with countries “under growing pressure to expand their efforts”, the Financial Times adds. Uneasy trading The EU has said that “countries should not be cutting separate deals with the same pharmaceutical companies that it has negotiated contracts with for the whole bloc”, the NYT says. But that has not stopped individual nations from agreeing deals with Russia and China to make up a shortfall in the number of doses required.