Brexit Britain's victory over the EU on Covid vaccination is not what it seems | The Guardian |

True, Britain got a month's head start on the EU by approving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine [German development] at the start of December, and then AstraZeneca's at the end of that month. It had to accept the terms offered by the pharmaceutical companies, however, both in paying a higher price per dose, and by waiving their civil liability in the event of adverse effects.

But, and there's a very big but, the UK's "success" is a really an illusion: because to be fully effective, the vaccine requires two doses. And only 0.80% of the UK population has received both shots, less than that of France (0.92%), and a long way behind Denmark, which has 2.87% of its population fully vaccinated.

Above all, extending the time lag between first and the second doses, as the UK has done, potentially carries risks. So Brexit Britain's triumph doesn't seem quite so striking, even if the logistics of rollout - which are handled by national health ministries and have no EU involvement - are more efficient in the UK than in most European countries.

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The EU together set out the demands it wanted met in exchange for financial aid aimed at speeding up production (€2.7bn). These demands included refusing to exempt laboratories from civil liability, insisting that the companies owned production lines on EU territory - an essential precaution at a time of temporary border closures - and, finally, reasonable prices. Not all these conditions were imposed by the US, the UK, Canada or Israel (which has also agreed to supply patients' data to the pharma companies).

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Solidarity is one of the great virtues of the European Union and it has implemented it without complaint, not only among its citizens but also with regard to the rest of the world. African countries in particular will benefit from the surplus jabs ordered by the EU. And this is a well thought out solidarity, by the way, since only vaccinating Europe's population makes no sense in a globalised world. [The EU-27 partnered with $500M contribution to the COVAX-WHO program]

Could the EU have moved with more speed? No doubt, but it would have had to kowtow more to big pharma, and would have been roundly criticised for doing so. Likewise, blaming Brussels for what are essentially production issues is just nonsense: first, production is down to the manufacturing firms and, second, they have never before had to deliver such volumes in such tight timeframes.

With an entirely new and complex vaccine technology such as the RNA messenger, rolling out production on this scale is obviously a challenge. This is why the French drug maker Sanofi will only be ready to release vaccines produced under its licensing agreement with Pfizer-BioNTech by June at the earliest.

It is true that the EU made one massive blunder. And it can be blamed entirely on the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, not the EU as a whole. By rushing through curbs on vaccine exports after its spat with AstraZeneca, the commission, out of sheer clumsiness, managed to reignite political tensions arising from the Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland.

This was an incredible mistake and it happened only because the German president of the commission communicated exclusively with her German entourage. Had she kept the rest of the institution in the loop, the measure suspending a key part of the Northern Ireland protocol would never have seen the light of day.

France ramps up COVID-19 vaccine production | BioPharma |