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!

We should*

@CaveMum there's a lot of people (me included) waiting on dose 2 of pfizer...

I would love to know how many Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines we have here out of 40 million we ordered. This is not good for the vaccine role out though, the EU have lost their minds 🙄

@Glenchase

No 10 not ruling out sending vaccine to EU- headline in Guardian Ridiculous. Once the EU started using bullying tactics that should have been the end of any negotiation and any possibility of sending them our vaccines.

You think the UK sitting on 10s of millions of doses whilst people in europe and around the world die is the right thing to do?

Look into what the UK Govt has said rather than a nationalistic knee jerk response.

Israeli say only 0.027% of patients with both doses end up in hospital, around 60% have good immune response after 1 dose.

They go with the Pfizer dose schedule.

@Glenchase

No 10 not ruling out sending vaccine to EU- headline in Guardian Ridiculous. Once the EU started using bullying tactics that should have been the end of any negotiation and any possibility of sending them our vaccines.

I would think (hope) that No.10 are trying to hold a neutral line and see how things develop.

There is no need for them to step into this at the moment, the EU are dealing with this in their own (very public) way and are doing themselves no favours whatsoever.

You think the UK sitting on 10s of millions of doses whilst people in europe and around the world die is the right thing to do?

Well we aren't sitting on 10s of millions, the supply cannot keep up with the capacity we have for administering them, there aren't any loafing. We have many ordered, which is a different thing. If we do give them any it will be a political decision rather than humanitarian.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that the UK is sitting on tens of millions of doses, are they? The whole strategy seems to be getting them out and injected as soon as they arrive from the supplier and the batch is cleared.

On the contrary, one strand here seems to be that AZ should have stockpiled the 4 million doses it shipped to the UK. In December. So 5 or 6 weeks ago. In the hopes that the EU might have got round to approving them.

A export ban on the vaccine, that will potentially kill 1000s of British citizens if we dont get the vaccine should be treated as an act of war by the EU

You think the UK sitting on 10s of millions of doses whilst people in europe and around the world die is the right thing to do?

I think Britain using the vaccines they legally acquired and paid for to help save lives, rather than letting them gather dust in a fridge pending the EU's ponderous approval process is absolutely the right thing to do.

@Backbee

You think the UK sitting on 10s of millions of doses whilst people in europe and around the world die is the right thing to do?

Well we aren't sitting on 10s of millions, the supply cannot keep up with the capacity we have for administering them, there aren't any loafing. We have many ordered, which is a different thing. If we do give them any it will be a political decision rather than humanitarian.

Thats not what is being said, its if the UK has vaccinated all the vulnerable groups then additional vaccine supplies could go to the EU.

Or do you think we should keep the 367m doses ordered as they come in?

@Bookriddle

A export ban on the vaccine, that will potentially kill 1000s of British citizens if we dont get the vaccine should be treated as an act of war by the EU

Lol! Good luck with that!

Of course we should @Bluethrough.

The issue is getting the second doses of the Pfizer for those who have had the first. Really what she should be looking at now as a worst case scenario is to just negotiate the amount we need to ensure that for those who have received the first dose, tell the EU to fuck off, and with the reimbursement of payments with a nice little layer on top for non delivery, concentrate on AZ

Couple of problems here ... firstly the still-unknown issue of whether the AZ one works well enough, and secondly that if the EU blocks Pfizer we may not get the "second doses" anyway

Still, not to worry; if that happens I'm sure a tame spokesman will be found to assure us that stretching the 12 week gap won't matter, or even that second doses aren't really needed anyway

In other news it appears the Madrid region may have run out of vaccines completely: www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-vaccines/spanish-regions-cap-covid-19-vaccinations-due-to-slowing-supply-idUSKBN29W1GH

Thats not what is being said, its if the UK has vaccinated all the vulnerable groups then additional vaccine supplies could go to the EU

Or they could go to the Covax programme.

@Bluethrough of course we should, its paid for by the British tax payer!

The EU paid AZ 300 million euros up front so they could scale up production. AZ now say they can't commit to volumes for EU, but obviously can for U.K. Breach of contract ahoy. Of course the EU will do what it needs to do to protect its members, of which U.K. is no longer one. So if AZ will not supply to EU, then EU will use emergency legislation to stop exports.

@Avondklok

The EU paid AZ 300 million euros up front so they could scale up production. AZ now say they can't commit to volumes for EU, but obviously can for U.K. Breach of contract ahoy. Of course the EU will do what it needs to do to protect its members, of which U.K. is no longer one. So if AZ will not supply to EU, then EU will use emergency legislation to stop exports.

Unless you've seen the contract, you can't know it's been breached (ahoy!)

The AZ CEO says that the contract they signed with Britain stipulated that Britain's orders would be fulfilled before that of any subsequent customer - and it took the lumbering EU 3 extra months to sign a contract with AZ.

@Avondklok The UK also paid up front, significantly earlier than the EU, and at significantly higher levels per capita than the EU. It is far from clear that there is a breach of contract - certainly AZ says not.

So why should EU orders be prioritised?

Because my lovely in laws live there and I care more about them than 95% of Brits?

@Sparrowfeeder totally fair - I would feel exactly the same.

[quote Motorina]@Avondklok The UK also paid up front, significantly earlier than the EU, and at significantly higher levels per capita than the EU. It is far from clear that there is a breach of contract - certainly AZ says not.

So why should EU orders be prioritised?[/quote]
Why should UK orders be prioritised, Cv doesn't prioritise.

Wait till the contract is published and if the EU paid 100s of millions to get AZ up to speed on production, then they have a considerable gripp.

@Glenchase

No 10 not ruling out sending vaccine to EU- headline in Guardian Ridiculous. Once the EU started using bullying tactics that should have been the end of any negotiation and any possibility of sending them our vaccines.

This, after the UK being dragged into what is a contractual issue between the EU and Astrazeneca it would not look politically good for Boris to send any doses, any sympathy the general public may have had will have been eroded by the bullying tactics and with local elections this year there would be a cost.

Why should UK orders be prioritised, Cv doesn't prioritise.

Daftest comment yet. And that's saying something.

I'm relieved that the big cloud that is Brexit may have had a silver lining re vaccines, but I don't think "see how horrible the EU are, look how they're threatening us?" is quite the argument in favour of leaving the EU some people seem to think it is. I liked it better when we weren't a third country; when we had power in the bloc rather than being the third country outside. Who knows what effect our insight and influence might have had on how vaccines were ordered for the whole EU, if we'd still been in it?