Why should the UK vaccine supply be diverted to Europe?

[lovelemoncurd]

They ordered 3 months later than the UK. They have themselves less time to sort glitches. They have been slow to the table and now they wish to punish to UK for being efficient.

I was a remain voter. I'm starting to change my mind!

@Wildswim

This is going to affect Ireland's vaccination programme, but there is very little in the Irish media about it.

It also has implications for NI and the open border between north and south - what will happen when NI is vaccinated and ROI is not? Will the south be in lockdown for longer?

I've checked both the Irish Times and RTE news websites for this EU-Astra Zenaca story this morning. In both places the story is buried and so far down the site I had to look quite hard for it. In the Irish Times, it is given a very pro-EU angle, the angle being UK risks a trade war weeks after Brexit, depicting the UK as the unreasonable one and mainly quoting EU officials.

Would it be sensible to suggest we would ‘return’ the 4m AZ doses from Europe, by sending 4m of the UK manufactured doses to Ireland?

Even with 2 doses, that would be a big chunk for them, and a benefit for us with our land border through the North/South.

Where does it end can eu seize vaccines if within Europe

Perhaps they could "discover" some "manufacturing/regulatory breach" and claim to be seizing it for the protection of all?
As said last night I'm concerned they could turn their attention to blocking other drugs en route to the UK - after all Covid isn't the only thing medication's required for

@MarshaBradyo just wanted to say thanks again for the report you linked last night ... some interesting stuff in there

It seems when I searched raid as could not read telegraph without registering that its not eu first raid on AZ
Granted its 2000 but clearly eu and az and a German pharmaceutical company got into a row.
Also it said eu raided London and Sweden locations.
I assume they can't raid our UK factories as we outside of the eu and they were on strop as they wanted to set up office in London and have some sort of diplomatic immunity.

www.theguardian.com/business/2000/may/18/8

When this is over hopefully soon, India is going to become even bigger in the pharmaceutical world. Companies are not going to appreciate their stock being held to ransom.

I can't help thinking that eu people who have spoken should not of gone to the papers first , surely the 'raid ' should of happened first , then contact the uk depending on findings etc
All this is doing is causing bad blood , I am reading online people from eu accusing uk of stockpiling as we have large orders , they are not grasping that we have orders but not supplies , if we had more supplies we could up our vaccinations
We have had to wait for modena yet its being used elsewhere as I guess we ordered after.
There had to be a better way to deal with this surely

David Allen Green is a contract lawyer. He used to do EU contracts too i believe.

He has this to say on the subject:

David Allen Green @davidallengreen
Right, I think I have worked out from various primary sources the relevant terms of the AstraZeneca contract

Summary post at FT at lunchtime, followed by 'working out' post at @lawandpolicy this afternoon

This has been a fun detective exercise

In essence, if you read both the public statements of the AstraZeneca CEO and the European Commissioner they are both effectively right, because they are talking about slightly different things

Andrew Dowd @andrew_dowd
How is it resolved though, when “everything one can” involves violating another contract which may contain a firm commitment? Could one party force [X] to honour their contract at a cost of breaking another contract?

David Allen Green @davidallengreen
ps

An English court would find it hard to accept that an 'endeavours' clause would require you to commit the tort of interfering with another contract

So if AZ are in breech of contract with the EU the EU still has an issue.

The EU can sue AZ. But AZ is still contractually obliged to both the UK and EU. It has a choice to either fulfil one at the expense of the other or breech both and risk ending up getting sued by both. Now in this scenario you would probably fulfil one - and you would base it on the importance of your customer, the size of the order and when the order was placed. You wouldn't leave yourself exposed to two grumpy customers.

It also explains the UK government staying well out of it, because if its a contract dispute between AZ and the EU the EU cant force AZ to breech their contract with the UK to fulfil theirs. They can only apply political pressure and make life difficult for AZ. But AZ is caught between a rock and a hard place because it doesn't want two grumpy customers.

Plus the factories the EU want supply from are in the UK. And that is a bit of an issue if the EU ultimately want that vaccine. They cant force the UK government to release AZ from their contract... In all scenarios the EU still end up without the vaccines they want.

That leaves them only with the trade war option. At which point Pfizer are legally liable for none delivery. And the UK can sue. But then the uk can legitimately say this is a trade war and withhold stock for pfizer production, at which point the EU can only really go full on 'sanction, trade war, board up the tunnel'. But they still have no more vaccine.

Will be interesting to see David Allen Green's full comments on this.

For a bit of balance according to
Irish media. As ever, there are two sides and the truth likely to be somewhere in the middle.

EU officials denied Mr Soriot’s assertion that the EU’s vaccine supply was dependent on factories located in the EU, saying that two British factories were also named as suppliers in their contract.

AstraZeneca was allocated €336 million in public EU funding to help the development and production of its vaccine in collaboration with Oxford University, in exchange for an agreement to supply the EU with 400 million early doses, part of a portfolio of more than two billion doses pre-booked.

Of those, more than 100 million doses were due to arrive by the end of March, according to EU officials, who say the company agreed that doses would be ready to ship as soon as the vaccine is approved by the European Medicines Agency

EU officials suggested that some vaccines produced by AstraZeneca in its European factories may have been shipped elsewhere, including the UK. “The customs data do not lie,” an EU official said. “We can see vaccines were sent to many countries.

Gosh, looks like it could get very messy!!

EU officials suggested that some vaccines produced by AstraZeneca in its European factories may have been shipped elsewhere, including the UK. “The customs data do not lie,” an EU official said. “We can see vaccines were sent to many countries.

Would said 'EU official' have preferred if the vaccines were left to gather dust in warehouses, pending the slow pace of EU approval, rather than potentially saving lives elsewhere?

If we hadn’t ordered enough - so much criticism

Correct, but once we have enough vaccine for the 9 at risk groups (i would prefer the top 5) we should help more vulnerable groups in other countries.

Ordered in time and good quantities of working vaccines - still they go on

Ordered 350m vaccines, still wanting more and more.

I happen to know an elderly couple in europe, the idea that we would hoard vaccine whilst they go without is wrong, the dehumanisation of europes vulnerable is quite sickening as is the vulnerable in Malawi (we recently had a Malawian living in UK die of CV)

The EU have messed up massively and had bad luck but i wonder what we would all be bleating if the Sanofi vaccine had worked and the OxF one hadn't?

I strongly suspect that suddenly we would all be europeans together!

What a mess, i’m sorry this has been caused by the EU having a big strop. Why have they gone so public? Why threaten the UK? Why try and discredit the vaccine for over 65’s? It’s between the EU and AZ, it has nothing to do with the UK. Why all the threats to the UK?

Also someone somewhere is going to get a headache at some point due to the German decision over AZ amd over 65s

Rob Ford @robfordmancs
One of two things will now happen in the next few weeks, as surveillance data on millions of U.K. over 65s already vaccinated with AZ jab emerges:
1. An almighty headache for the German govt if data shows strong protection
2. An almighty headache for U.K. govt if it doesn’t

Funtimes

@Bluethrough but what about herd immunity? Also we have ordered lots as its been clearly said this maybe a jab that is needed again, we don't know
We don't have excess stock here and now , we are gambling here with the big gap between doses so we get more at risks groups done with the first jab, others could do that .

I can’t wait to have my jab now, I was on the fence before. Good luck to the EU trying to persuade their citizens to take AZ now, they will have so much doubt in their minds.

I'm the same @Baileysforchristmas, I can't wait. DH is 66 and will have his long before me and I'm a tiny bit jealous!

(I have a needle phobia so might not be so gung ho when I'm actually called but I won't be donating it elsewhere!)

The EU have messed up massively and had bad luck but i wonder what we would all be bleating if the Sanofi vaccine had worked and the OxF one hadn't?

Yes I was pondering this. If we had not got it right and failed to order successful vaccines plus Ox / Az hadn’t worked. This site would go crazy and it wouldn’t be asking for EU supplies. It would be all about failure of U.K.

Although it would be very bad and might not be constrained to this site. Or online only.

Yep it does look like the EU have messed up here. Their investment in vaccine development was way behind the per capita investment in the US and UK and it does show that they thought they would be able to continue to rely on the life science excellence in those countries to support them. They were then slow in contracting for doses and they have also be slow in getting regulatory approval.

Even as a remainer it is obvious that they have screwed up.

The tub thumping is to be expected as would be the case if it was us or the US in the same predicament, but you can see by the rather unflustered reaction of the AZ CEO that he knows that there is little the EU can do to his company.

Of course if they do start refusing to release other vaccines to the UK that will be when it gets interesting. No third country government is going to delay it's vaccination programme to help out the EU - the political damage would be too great.

@Baileysforchristmas

What a mess, i’m sorry this has been caused by the EU having a big strop. Why have they gone so public? Why threaten the UK? Why try and discredit the vaccine for over 65’s? It’s between the EU and AZ, it has nothing to do with the UK. Why all the threats to the UK?

To satisfy a domestic audience. They have to be seen to be doing something even if they know there isn't a chance it will make any difference.

Its all about the optics.

Plus there is so much bad blood towards the uk at the moment all it does is feed it. Its easy to blame the uk.

Im pretty sure if sanofi had worked not Oxford we'd have a worse problem. People would be going nuts and its arguable about how much longer Johnson would be keeping his job.

And yes people would be saying the uk should supply us etc etc. Im not sure the vaccines would actually turn up though.

Thats what desparation looks like.

In another parallel dimension AZ and Sanofi both worked.

Trouble is there were always going to be winners and losers. WHO warned about it.

@PinkSparklyPussyCat what persuaded me was the CEO would quite happily give it to his 92 year old mother, he said it’s a very good vaccine.

Irish media. As ever, there are two sides and the truth likely to be somewhere in the middle.

Contradictory statements here;

EU officials denied Mr Soriot’s assertion that the EU’s vaccine supply was dependent on factories located in the EU, saying that two British factories were also named as suppliers in their contract. ...

EU officials suggested that some vaccines produced by AstraZeneca in its European factories may have been shipped elsewhere, including the UK. “The customs data do not lie,” an EU official said. “We can see vaccines were sent to many countries.

If the UK had a similar contract (i.e. not reliant on particular factories) then it's perfectly fine for us to have received vaccines produced in the EU.

Boris getting ONE thing right essentially by lucky chance/ default over the past 12 months doesn't make Brexit a good thing.

It's hard not to feel vindicated at the government actually making a decision that's been in our interests, and god how exhilarating to be ahead of a curve for once... although if memory serves it was more by luck than judgement (didn't someone forget to reply to an email or something about joining the collective bargaining?)

Additionally, in our defence I'd add that our death toll is so appalling, second only to the US, it's in everyone's interests for us to have an accelerated vaccine programme with no diversion of supply.

If we had things more under control, or weren't so disproportionately affected, not least with new variant (which I know is probably everywhere but it's turbo charged our death rate) - well in that case I think there could be a humanitarian argument to share supply but whilst the country in Europe which is next worst affected (Germany) has "only" around half our daily death rate I can't see why we should.

But why go so public and not just sort it out with AZ? It ‘s terrible way of doing things and will just hold everyone up on the vaccine, it solves nothing.

@Clavinova

Irish media. As ever, there are two sides and the truth likely to be somewhere in the middle.

Contradictory statements here;

EU officials denied Mr Soriot’s assertion that the EU’s vaccine supply was dependent on factories located in the EU, saying that two British factories were also named as suppliers in their contract. ...

EU officials suggested that some vaccines produced by AstraZeneca in its European factories may have been shipped elsewhere, including the UK. “The customs data do not lie,” an EU official said. “We can see vaccines were sent to many countries.

If the UK had a similar contract (i.e. not reliant on particular factories) then it's perfectly fine for us to have received vaccines produced in the EU.

AZ agree that the uk factories are in the EU contact but Soriot explained:

“The UK agreement was reached in June, three months before the European one. As you could imagine, the UK government said the supply coming out of the UK supply chain would go to the UK first. Basically, that's how it is. In the EU agreement it is mentioned that the manufacturing sites in the UK were an option for Europe, but only later."

Would it be sensible to suggest we would ‘return’ the 4m AZ doses from Europe, by sending 4m of the UK manufactured doses to Ireland?

That's a great suggestion! But no doubt the EU would then start blustering about why Ireland can't keep them if Germany and France aren't benefitting too, etc. etc!