Today 09:59 Thepilotlightsgoneout
I have a question! If there was no Brexit and we were still in the EU, would we have been able to strike our own deals the vaccine companies as we had or would we have HAD to be part of any EU deals?
Anyone know?
This is a a very good article, worth the read as it's a bit of a timeline from January 2020 to now on what decisions were made by who and when regards the Uk and EU.
Also shows how much money was put in to the supporting the pharmas in up scaling.
www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/29/we-had-to-go-it-alone-how-the-uk-got-ahead-in-the-covid-vaccine-race
part quotes
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AstraZeneca says the headstart it had was vital
The vaccine brewing process – as it described by the company – takes three months and the yield it produces is uncertain. There were yield shortfalls in the UK, but as Soriot said in an interview earlier this week, “we have had an extra three months to fix all the glitches we experienced” before the vaccine was approved at the end of December
With Brexit looming, the UK drew huge criticism for declining to join EU schemes to purchase PPE and ventilators. There was also growing pressure to join a joint EU procurement plan for vaccines, and to put aside the Brexit rhetoric
But Brussels’ demands were eye-watering: the UK, unlike EU member states, would not be able to take part in the governance of the scheme, including the steering group or the negotiating team
Britain would have no say in what vaccines to procure, at what price or in what quantity, and for what delivery schedule. There would be no side-deals possible
British officials were not convinced. “We had to go it alone,” said a UK source. “There was nothing there for us.” By the time a special UK vaccine taskforce was created in April, the seeds of a successful strategy had been sown
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“It is Europe’s moment”, Von der Leyen tweeted in mid-December as she announced that between 27 and 29 December, people across the EU’s 27 member states would be vaccinated. “We protect our citizens together,” she said. But her confidence was misplaced. There were hidden frailties
Rasmus Hansen, the chief executive of Airfinity, a data analytics company working in the life sciences sector, said the EU had failed to invest as it should have in scaling-up production plants
The EU had spent just €1.78bn in “risk money”, cash handed to pharmaceutical companies without any guarantee of a return, compared to €1.9bn by the UK and €9bn by the US, he said. There were consequences
The first hit to the EU strategy was the announcement by Pfizer/BioNTech, one of only two vaccine producers authorised for use in the EU at this stage – along with Moderna, with whom only a smaller order has been made – that they needed to slow down production in order to upgrade a facility in Belgium and boost output in late February
This did not unduly upset officials initially. They had AstraZeneca, and its total of 400m doses, coming down the line. “I am not sure why this debate is there because the numbers are there, the production is ramping up,” Sandra Gallina, the commission’s chief negotiator, told MEPs on 12 January
EU's vaccine supply issues mean light at end of tunnel that much further away
But then the hammer blow: last Friday, AstraZeneca, not yet approved by the EMA but expected to get the green light, said it would now be able to deliver only 25% of the intended 100m doses due in the first quarter of this year. A filtering problem at its plant in Seneffe, south of Brussels, had left the company with a lower yield than expected
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You would have thought given the size of the EU 27 and the amount of production needed, that their 'Risk money' would have been more on a parr with the US $9billion