Don’t conflate the ability to negotiate carefully with banning exports. The private company AZ signed a contract with the British govt according to which they can export once they have delivered the agreed doses to the U.K. the faster they deliver on their commitments, the faster they can start exporting. No one forced them to sign the deal and no one in the UK is banning exports of the vaccine.
This is hair splitting, because the effect is exactly the same. The UK made sure not to export any vaccines until it has more than enough. This is exactly what the the US is doing, even if they use technically slightly different means.
Having a preferential contract with a single supplier is not remotely the same as imposing export controls on every supplier within a territory. The EU is and always has been allowed to source vaccines from the UK and the fact it voluntarily chose not to does not mean it was 'effectively' banned from doing so. The British government spent months and tens of millions of pounds setting up the AZ supply chain while the EU were haggling over its contract. It's not then unreasonable for the British government to require that it has priority on the supply it was instrumental in creating.
You just confirmed my point. The EU -in contrast to the US and the UK- did not want any exclusivity. They wanted collaboration and a fair distribution of vaccines. They negotiated on a EU level exactly to avoid any nationalistic competition. I am not saying that the US/UK strategy is bad in any objective way. I am just saying that it is the same strategy.
By "fair" do you mean EU countries favoured over the rest of the world? How much have the EU exported? They only house 6% of the world's population, but are keeping something like 75% for themselves, no?
And how much would be the EU's "fair" share of vaccine manufactured in the UK? As they seem to be expecting far more than that 25% for themselves, from their retoric they wanted it "evenly" distributed, i.e. massively in their favour, directly from Ms Von der Leyen's mouth:
“That is the message to AstraZeneca, ‘You fulfil your contract with Europe before you start delivering to other countries’.”
There's nothing "fair" about the EU's distribution of the vaccine, claiming otherwise shows complete naivety or bare faced lying.
Don't conflate Merck with Merck. There's two "Merck", one is Merck KGaA, which is a German company, and the other one is Merck & Co. Inc., which is the US company. These are independent entities today, they just share a common history by originally being a German company, of which the US company was splitted off during WW1.
The Oxford/Merck deal would have been with Merck KGaA, as far as I know. The US government would have had no means to apply export bans to a German-based company.
I have no knowledge beyond what I just heard from you.
That sounded implausible. The country which had the ability to negotiate that happened to be the same country where the doses were manufactured? Why couldn't the UK apply its careful negotiating skills elsewhere too?
Alternative hypothesis: the credible implicit or explicit threats of a ban were what enabled the deal. "Sign this or else."
The UK government provided a lot of the money to AZ to build out the local vaccine supply chain and factories. Those factories most likely wouldn't exist unless the UK government had paid that money. So, as part of paying for all that, they asked for timed exclusively.
Also remember the vaccine was developed by Oxford using a significant amount of UK government funding, and was licensed to other countries, such as India, for low cost manufacturing.
We did also buy a lot of vaccine from other places (e.g. Pfizer which is also being widely deployed). But with AZ in particular (and to some extent Novavax) there was a focus on building a local supply chain so that countries can't play games with our vaccine supply. Supposedly Pfizer turned down the offer to build UK based factories.
- The vaccine is mainly funded by Oxford University and AstraZeneca (AZ) . The UK Government also provided £65.5m.
- Most of the AZ vaccine for the UK is being made in the UK. AZ have said none of their vaccines have been sent from the EU to the UK.
- AstraZeneca said its agreement with the EU allowed the option of supplying Europe from UK sites, but only once the UK had sufficient supplies (due to the contract the UK negotiated) .
- A drop in confidence in the AZ vaccine means there are lots of unused vaccines. France and Germany have used only about half of the AstraZeneca jabs they have received, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
- 10 million Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines have been exported from the EU to the UK.
Are there really a lot of unused vaccines in Europe though? What are the equivalent numbers for other countries? I submit it's a supply chain thing, there's a week's worth of vaccines moving from the factory to the humans
No there are not. Those are second doses. In EU they 'reserved' second doses. UK for example went on to vaccinate as much as possible. That's why there will be a delay now of a month or two.
Unfortunately the drop in consumer trust has been enormous. [0] And humans lose trust faster than they regain it.
After the wild "let us suspend AZ and let us restart it in two days" ride, it will be much harder to get AZ into arms of European patients. Even here in the Czech Republic, where AZ wasn't suspended, the reverbations in the public are stark and all kinds of half-baked conspiracies started circulating. (An example: "Germans want to get rid of a junk vaccine and force it on us Slavic untermenschen, while they will only use more expensive and better Pfizer for themselves.")
(a) Consumer confidence wasn't high in the first place
(b) This wasn't without reason. AZ has significantly more severe side effects and is less effective.
(c) That said, I'd certainly still take it, it is highly effective at preventing the worst outcomes.
(d) That said, the whole "consumer confidence" narrative is a canard. Its effects don't come anywhere near the effect of the delivery shortfalls. It's so totally ridiculous that it does make me wonder where it is coming from.
How much did they fund before the initial order? I can't seem to find a source. All the results just talk about their down payment not the initial funding like the UKs £65m. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/56483766
Another hypothesis: Oxford was originally going to partner with Merck [1] but there were no supply guarantees in that contract. AstraZeneca was willing to give guarantees and run production in the UK, so the UK government leaned on Oxford and had them partner with the more agreeable supplier.
I don’t know why you presuppose the U.K. is where it would have had to be manufactured. Manufacture in the U.K. appears to have been made to happen at the insistence and investment of the U.K. government, from my recollection of a thread by an Oxford researcher involved.
There appears to be a similar deal with Novavax to setup similar domestic capacity in the UK for its vaccine.
Even if the UK was threatening AZ with an export ban, they didn’t force AZ to accept those terms. AZ could have just said no and made the U.K. government look incompetent and unleashed media scrutiny on BoJo.
Yes, having the industrial base is part of the attraction of the UK for pharmaceutical companies. As is having a skilled workforce and a reliable system of laws.
I’m rejecting your original point about the U.S. and U.K. doing the same thing, which they aren’t.
Well, the motivation and effect is exactly the same which is what most people care about in the end. It's a nationalistic move which is what makes your day if you're a nationalist.
This is not what the contract says. The contract says there is no other contract that would prevent them fulfilling the EU contract. Since the contract makes no promises about delivery schedule it’s pretty clear the U.K. contract does not prevent its fulfilment, as the U.K. contract can only delay it.
However the EU contract seems to insist the initial 300M doses are made within the EU itself, and the EU has its own dedicated supply chain regardless that can eventually deliver, so this also seems to exclude conflict with the U.K. contract.
Don’t conflate the ability to negotiate carefully with banning exports. The private company AZ signed a contract with the British govt according to which they can export once they have delivered the agreed doses to the U.K. the faster they deliver on their commitments, the faster they can start exporting. No one forced them to sign the deal and no one in the UK is banning exports of the vaccine.