EU threatens to block exports of Pfizer Covid vaccine

A patient receives a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at a vaccination centre in Castelnau-le-Lez, France, on Monday

Credit: Guillaume Horcajuelo/Shutterstock

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Britain’s Covid vaccine supply is in jeopardy after the EU threatened to block exports of the Belgian-made Pfizer jabs amid a row with UK-based AstraZeneca.

Brussels decided to impose tighter controls on exports after reacting with fury to the news that AstraZeneca will deliver 50 million fewer doses to the EU than it had expected.

Ministers now fear deliveries of the Pfizer jabs will – at best – be delayed by extra paperwork and that the EU could try to stop doses being sent to non-EU countries after saying it will "take any action required to protect its citizens".

In March, the bloc imposed export restrictions on personal protective equipment after it struggled with supply to its member states.  

On Monday night, MPs accused the EU of acting out of "spite" as it tried to deflect blame for its own mistakes in getting vaccination programmes off the ground.

The EU’s health commissioner, Stella Kyriakides, summoned AstraZeneca bosses to a series of video meetings on Monday at which she made clear that their explanations for the reduction in doses were unacceptable.

Ms Kyriakides said an "export transparency mechanism" would be put in place "as soon as possible", which would mean that "in future all companies producing vaccines against Covid-19 in the EU will have to provide early notification whenever they want to export vaccines to third countries".

She also demanded that AZ produce a list of how many doses it has provided to each country – information both the company and Downing Street have been desperate to keep under wraps.  

The UK is heavily dependent on the Pfizer vaccine and is expecting almost 3.5 million doses, which are integral to the Government’s target of vaccinating all over-70s by mid-February, to be delivered in the next three weeks.

Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccines minister, had already warned that meeting the target will be "tight" and that any unforeseen supply issues could blow doing so off course.

On Saturday, The Telegraph revealed that around half a million fewer doses of Covid vaccine would be delivered to the NHS this week because of supply delays. 

Speaking at a Downing Street press conference on Monday, Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, hinted at potential supply problems, saying: "The rate-limiting factor to this vaccination programme remains supply. As we know, supply is tight."

So far, Britain has given 6,573,570 people a first vaccine dose, reaching 78.7 per cent of the over-80s.

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A total of 40 million Pfizer doses have been ordered – enough to inoculate 20 million people – of which 30 million were due to arrive by the end of May.

Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, said exports of Covid vaccines should be authorised at EU level before they could leave the bloc, meaning Brussels would have the final say over whether Pfizer jabs could cross the Channel. Mr Spahn said: "We, as the EU, must be able to know whether and what vaccines are being exported from the EU."

The row blew up after AstraZeneca – which developed the vaccine with Oxford University – told the EU last week that it would only be able to deliver 31 million of the 80 million doses that EU countries had been expecting by the end of March.

The company blamed "production problems" caused by work to ramp up long-term production at its factories, but in a phone call with the chief executive, Pascal Soriot, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, demanded the contract be honoured in full.

The EU, which is finally expected to approve the use of the AstraZeneca jab this week, has been humbled by the slow start to its vaccine rollout, with Britain surging ahead of other European countries.

The AstraZeneca jab has only been found to be eight per cent effective in the over-65s and will not be approved by the European Medicines Agency for use for that age group, according to reports in the German tabloid Bild and Handelsblatt on Monday night, citing unnamed sources.

A spokesman for AstraZeneca refuted the claims as "completely incorrect" and said data published in November demonstrated "strong immune responses" in older adults with 100 per cent of second dose recipients generating "spike-specific antibodies".

The UK declined an invitation to be part of an EU-wide procurement process and was able to steal a march on the rest of the world by becoming the first country to approve the Pfizer jab and the first Western country to begin vaccinating its citizens.

While Britain has administered more than 6.5 million doses, Germany has only administered 1.78 million, the highest of any EU country.

How many people in the UK have received their first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine?

David Jones, the deputy chairman of the Conservative European Research Group, told The Telegraph: "Quite clearly they’ve had a very cumbersome procurement process which has resulted in this. The fact is we were far more astute in our purchasing process. 

"Frankly, it seems like a rather childish and spiteful way to behave. This looks awfully like blackmail, which is pretty disreputable and shows why we were right to leave the EU."

The former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: "If the EU were to take action unilaterally that restricted supplies of vaccine bought legally and fairly by the UK, it would poison economic relations for a generation. At such a critical moment, the world needs vaccine nationalism like a hole in the head."

Greg Clark, a former Business Secretary and the chairman of the Commons science committee, added: "This is no time to be introducing extra bureaucracy into the production or delivery of vaccines. The focus of manufacturers should not be distracted from making as many doses as possible as quickly as possible and getting them into the hands of vaccinators."

A Government spokesman said: "We remain in close contact with all of our vaccine suppliers and scheduled deliveries will fully support vaccination [of over-70s] by Feb 15."

The Government said the "bulk" of the AstraZeneca vaccine for the UK was made in Oxfordshire and Staffordshire.

However, AZ also has production facilities in Europe, which have been used to supply the UK in the past. EU sources said they wanted to establish whether any vaccines earmarked for the EU had ended up being sent to Britain after it started its vaccination programme first.