Matt Hancock joins condemnation of EU vaccine export ban threat

Matt Hancock joins condemnation of EU threat to BLOCK vaccine exports to help its lagging roll-out and insists the UK ‘fully expects’ contracts to be honoured despite Brussels’ ‘brinkmanship’

• Ursula von der Leyen has threatened to block European jab exports to countries with higher vaccine rates 
• She demanded Britain hand over AstraZeneca doses, and blamed the drug-maker for Europe’s slow roll-out 
• That is despite the fact that 19 EU countries have halted or restricted use of the jab, an estimated 7.5million doses have gone un-used on the continent, and people are refusing to take it due to unfounded safety fears
• Jeremy Brown, expert advising the UK government, warned today that ban will cost more lives than it saves 

Matt Hancock today insisted the UK ‘fully expects’ all of its contracts with vaccine manufacturers to be delivered on as ministers condemned Brussels’ ‘brinkmanship’ after the EU threatened to block exports of the jabs.  

The Health Secretary told a Downing Street press conference this evening he believes vaccines manufactured inside the bloc which have been purchased by the UK will still be shipped because it is ‘fulfilling contractual responsibilities’. 

He was the latest senior member of the Government to rebuke the EU after a rattled Ursula von der Leyen complained the bloc is sending millions of doses to other countries while receiving few in return as she warned of action to ensure ‘reciprocity’.   

Speaking as the EU’s vaccine rollout descended deeper into chaos, Ms von der Leyen called on Britain to begin sending AstraZeneca jabs overseas. 

She lashed out at the drug-maker for ‘under-producing and under-delivering’ doses, saying it is to blame for the slow place of Europe’s roll-out. 

That is despite the fact that 19 countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain, have halted the use of AstraZeneca jabs over unfounded fears they cause blood clots, meaning around 7.5million doses are currently sitting unused.

‘All options are on the table. We are in the crisis of the century. And I’m not ruling out any anything for now,’ Ms von der Leyen told reporters in Brussels. It raises the possibility that stocks of Pfizer vaccine manufactured in Belgium could be prevented from going to Britain – although most of the UK’s AstraZeneca supplies are made in this country.

In an ominous sign this afternoon, the NHS has warned vaccination centres that there will be a ‘significant’ constraint on jabs for the next month – although it is not clear whether the shortage is linked to the spat with Brussels.  

But the sabre-rattling drew a furious British response, with Dominic Raab saying Ms von der Leyen’s comments flew in the face of ‘direct assurances’ that contracts will be honoured and Tory MPs accusing her of ‘playing politics with people’s lives’. 

‘I think it takes some explaining because the world’s watching,’ Mr Raab told Reuters. ‘We’ve, all of us, including with our European friends, been saying throughout the pandemic, that you’d be wrong to curtail or interfere with lawfully-contracted supply. We all said it last year on PPE. We’ve been saying it this year, on vaccines and other things.

Mr Raab said the stance ‘cuts across the direct assurances that we had from the Commission’. ‘We expect those assurances and legal contracted supply to be respected,’ he added. 

‘Frankly, I’m surprised we’re having this conversation. It is normally what the UK and EU team up with to reject when other countries with less democratic regimes than our own engage in that kind of brinkmanship.’

Boris Johnson’s spokesman said the EU must stand by its ‘commitments’ and not restrict vaccine exports that have been legitimately agreed.

Mr Hancock told the briefing this evening: ‘This vaccine is provided at cost to the whole world, so it is now being manufactured all the way round the world and we legally signed a contract for delivery of the first 100million doses here for people in the UK as you would expect, both to ensure that people in the UK can get their jab and also because this is a UK funded, UK delivered vaccine.

‘But we are very happy for others around the world to be able to also manufacture it at cost but at the same time as President Von der Leyen has said, she said there should not be restrictions on the export of vaccines by companies where they are fulfilling contractual responsibilities.

‘And so the supply of vaccines from EU production facilities to the UK is indeed fulfilling contractual responsibilities and we fully expect those contracts to be delivered on.’ 

Earlier, Tory MPs Andrea Jenkyns, Chris Green and Marcus Fysh all hit out at the EU’s actions, accusing Eurocrats of ‘giving up’ on free trade and behaving like communists. 

Health Secretary Matt Hancock today said he ‘fully expects’ the UK’s vaccine contracts with manufacturers to be delivered on

Ursula von der Leyen has told Britain to hand over doses of AstraZeneca vaccine or else risk seeing jab exports from the continent blocked, despite the fact that most of Europe has halted its use

European leaders have turned on one-another in the latest episode of the bloc’s shambolic jabs saga, amid fury at the decision to block the use of AstraZeneca vaccines as a third wave of infections looms 

Europe’s already-slow jab roll-out has been hit by further delays after the use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine was temporarily suspended. The UK has relied heavily on AstraZeneca jabs to power ahead with its roll-out, which is one of the world’s fastest

HOW BADLY WOULD UK’S VACCINE DRIVE SUFFER IF THE EU BLOCKED VACCINE EXPORTS?

If the European Union blocked all exports of coronavirus vaccines made on its turf, Britain could remain self-sufficient and still get jabs to the entire population.

However, it could come under pressure on second dose supply.

EU president Ursula von der Leyen suggested today that the bloc could start an export ban on vaccines – the second time that threat has been made – because the continent’s rollout is going so badly. 

WHICH VACCINES ARE MADE IN THE EU? 

The Pfizer/BioNTech jab is currently the only vaccine used in the UK but manufactured in the EU, at the company’s plant in Puurs, Belgium.

AstraZeneca’s jab is made at home in England and Wales.

Moderna’s – which will become available in about two weeks’ time at the start of April – is produced in Switzerland, which is not an EU member and so not under von der Leyen’s jurisdiction.

The Janssen vaccine, which has not yet been approved by Britain but is likely to be next, will be made in various factories around the world, including in France, Belgium, the US and Japan. Britain’s supply is likely to come from the EU but is not expected until the second half of this year in any case.

CAN WE RELY ON ASTRAZENECA? 

The good news is that the UK has ordered so many doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab – 100million – that in a worst-case scenario it could immunise the entire adult population (around 50million people) using that one alone.

And supply of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab in April and May will be around three to four times larger than of Pfizer and over 20 times as large as those from Moderna – at around three to four million available per week, according to a delivery schedule leaked by the Scottish Government in January – meaning the country will be able to rely on those for the vast majority of its vaccinations.

WHAT ABOUT PFIZER SECOND DOSES? 

The bad news is that around 13million people have already had at least one dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, and the majority of them are still waiting for a second jab, which are likely only to come from within the EU.

This means that Britain has to have another 13million doses at least, in order to make sure those people are fully protected. 

And it also hopes for another 14million so it can immunise the total 20million for whom doses were ordered. 

Pfizer and the UK Government have both refused to comment on the supply chain but deliveries are expected to be smaller in April.

The Department of Health may have to stop using Pfizer supplies for first-time vaccinations within weeks if the spectre of export issues remains, MailOnline understands, because it must begin to stockpile supplies to cope with the huge demand for second doses that will come in April, three months after the rollout exploded in January.

The delivery projections accidentally published by the Scottish Government suggest its supplies of Pfizer will tumble from 130,000 per week throughout March to just 78,000 per week in April and May.

This could equate to approximately 1.5million per week for the whole UK dropping to 950,000 per week, according to the distribution formula used by the Government. 

The UK vaccinated more than 2.5million people per week throughout most of January and February and around half of all doses used were Pfizer, meaning the demand for second doses could exceed one million per week in April and May.

If this is the case the Government will have to use all of the projected 950,000 per week suggested in the Scottish delivery schedule while also hoping it has enough left over to meet this rolling demand – leaving little to no capacity for people to receive the Pfizer jab for the first time.

Pfizer declined to comment on its supply chain but said: ‘In the UK, we are continuing to liaise closely with the Government to deliver the 40million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine that we have committed to supply before the end of the year and can confirm that overall projected supply remains the same for quarter one (January to March).’

Elsewhere Jeremy Brown, who is part of the committee advising the UK government on its vaccine drive, said today that he cannot understand the logic of Europe’s ban and warned that it will cost more lives than it saves.

He added that links between AstraZeneca’s jab and blood clots appears ‘spurious’ with fears being ‘overblown’, and that Europe’s actions will hurt vaccine drives around the world by casting doubt on an ‘incredibly safe [and] very effective’ jab.  

Speaking to reporters in Brussels today, Von der Leyen said: ‘AstraZeneca has unfortunately under-produced and under-delivered, and this painfully, of course, reduced the speed of the vaccination campaign.’

‘Where the UK is concerned, we have observed that in the last six weeks 10 million doses by now have been exported to the UK.’

The UK was ‘country number one’ in terms of exports from the EU, she said.

‘Indeed the UK is producing AstraZeneca. In our contract with AstraZeneca there are even two sites in the UK that are put in the contract for potential deliveries for the European Union.

‘We are still waiting for doses to come from the UK, so this is an invitation to show us that there are also doses from the UK coming to the European Union so that we have reciprocity.’

Von der Leyen said the company originally pledged to deliver 90 million doses of its shot in the first three months of 2021, but later said it could only provide 40 million, then more recently only 30 million. 

For the second quarter of 2021, she said, AstraZeneca will only deliver 70 million doses, less than half of the 180 million it was ‘contractually obliged to deliver.’ 

Von der Leyen also noted the EU has exported around 41 million vaccine doses to other countries. ‘But open roads run in both directions, and this is why we need to ensure that there is reciprocity and proportionality,’ she said.

‘If the situation does not change, we will have to reflect on how to make exports to vaccine producing countries dependent on their level of openness,’ she added, without naming any country.

But In a break with other European leaders she insisted that she ‘trusts’ AstraZeneca’s vaccine and that the main problem is not safety, but supplies.  

Australia asks EU for 1m jabs to help outbreak in Papua New Guinea

Australia said on Wednesday it will ask the European Union to release 1 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine to help Papua New Guinea (PNG) battle a dangerous outbreak that authorities fear could spread to other parts of the region.

The request could inflame existing tensions between Canberra and Brussels amid claims of vaccine nationalism after the EU recently blocked an Australia-bound shipment of the doses.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Wednesday said the vaccines were contracted to Australia and were now badly needed to contain a surge in coronavirus cases in the Pacific island nation, parts of which are just a short boat ride from Australian territory.

‘We’ve contracted them. We’ve paid for them and we want to see those vaccines come here so we can support our nearest neighbour, PNG, to deal with their urgent needs in our region,’ Morrison told reporters in Canberra.

‘They’re our family, they’re our friends. They’re our neighbours. They’re our partners… This is in Australia’s interests, and is in our region’s interests.’

Australia will donate 8,000 locally produced COVID-19 vaccines to PNG as an immediate response to the outbreak, and would make a million doses available as soon as they arrived from Europe, he said.

Earlier this month, the EU, at Italy’s request, blocked a shipment of 250,000 doses of the AstraZeneca PLC vaccine to Australia, citing vaccine shortages in Europe.

Von der Leyen joins a growing body of policy experts, politicians and medical professionals urging European leaders to lift a temporary ban on using the vaccine that was rushed into place in the last few days.

Professor Brown, who is also head of respiratory diseases at UCL, told BBC Radio 4 earlier today that he cannot understand the logic of blocking the treatment. 

He said: ‘I don’t understand why this is happening… because we do know the vaccine works, it prevents about 85 per cent of admissions to hospital after one dose. Even in the very old and the frail.

‘By rolling out the vaccine you prevent deaths, by stopping the vaccine they will cause more illness and more deaths by this week or two hiatus using the vaccine than they will ever prevent.

‘I honestly don’t really know [how they reached that conclusion].

‘If people sit back and look at the overall picture which is this vaccine is incredibly safe, its very effective, and we are in the middle of a pandemic that we will not get out of until everyone has been vaccinated.

‘To interrupt the vaccine for what will turn out – most likely – to be a spurious reason seems unnecessary.’

European countries rushed to halt their roll-out of the jabs this week, following the lead of a few smaller countries which paused vaccination last week, after a few dozen cases of blood clots occurred amid millions of doses that have been handed out. 

But the hasty decision has now sparked a civil war, with the European Commission issuing a rare rebuke to EU leaders on Tuesday, urging them to keep using AstraZeneca shots to protect as many people as possible.

‘Every dose counts,’ health minister Stella Kyriakides told a virtual summit, pointing to 14million vaccines that have gone un-used in Europe including 7.5million AstraZeneca jabs. 

Meanwhile Poland’s Prime Minister vowed to keep administering the shots in defiance of 19 countries which have paused their use, accusing other leaders of ‘giving in to panic’ about blood clots.

In Germany, health minister Jens Spahn is facing calls to resign over his handling of the crisis including the decision to block AstraZeneca jabs, with Wolfgang Kubicki, leader of the FDP, accusing him of undermining trust in the vaccine.

‘We should open up AstraZeneca to everyone,’ he said. ‘The vaccine is of no use if it is not vaccinated quickly enough.’

Angela Merkel’s CDU party also slumped to its lowest rating since the start of the Covid pandemic in a new poll released today, as public confidence in her management of the crisis ebbs away.

Elsewhere France’s Emmanuel Macron – also facing an election this year – and Italy’s newly-installed premier Mario Draghi signalled an imminent U-turn on AstraZeneca once the European Medicines Agency gives its final verdict on Thursday.

But the EMA has already insisted twice – once last week and once on Tuesday – that any risks from AstraZeneca’s vaccine are far outweighed by the benefits and that there is no reason to stop using it.  

Italy’s medicines authority yesterday admitted the decision to stop using the Oxford-AstraZeneca was ‘political’, while in Germany, Angela Merkel’s closest allies hit out against the decision to suspend its use when cases were rocketing across the country.

Berlin officials yesterday defended the move, claiming that seven cases of a rare type of blood clot had occurred in the 1.6 million people it had given the jab – a higher number than expected. The German Health Ministry argued ‘it would not be responsible to continue vaccinating without an investigation’.

But in sign of the chaos, France and Italy were last night already signalling they could make a U-turn – suggesting they could restart use of jab once EMA gives its final verdict tomorrow (Thursday).

Poland said yesterday that it would carry on using the AstraZeneca jab, accusing other states of giving in to ‘disinformation’.

The PM’s chief of staff said: ‘Most countries that have temporarily suspended (AstraZeneca) vaccinations have given in to panic caused by media-fuelled information about alleged complications.’

British regulators, politicians and scientists maintain the jab – which has already been given to 11 million Britons – is safe and that any links to blood clots are purely coincidental.

Last night, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: ‘The Oxford/Astra-Zeneca jab is safe… that is what the British regulator says, but also the World Health Organisation and even the European regulator.

‘We know that over 10 million people have had it in this country.’

‘We keep the effects of these vaccines under review all the time and we know that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is saving lives in the UK right now. So if you get the call, get the jab.’ 

Sweden, Portugal and Lithuania became the latest EU countries to pause use of the vaccine yesterday, taking the total number who have suspended or restricted use to 19.

Downing Street suggested these countries were wrong to stop administering the Astra-Zeneca jab and that Boris Johnson would be ‘perfectly happy’ to receive it himself.

Reassurances from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and EMA have so far failed to quell the growing crisis, with both holding emergency meetings this week.

The EMA confirmed it has been investigating since the concerns were first flagged last week, with its full findings due to be published tomorrow afternoon (Thurs).

Emer Cooke, executive director of EMA, told a press briefing on Tuesday there was no current indication that the Oxford vaccine was the cause of the ‘very rare’ reported blood clots.

She said: ‘I want to stress at present there is no indication that vaccination has caused these conditions.

‘They have not come up in the clinical trials and they are not listed as known side events with this vaccine.

‘In clinical trials both vaccinated people and people who received the placebo have shown some very small number of blood clot developments.

‘The number of thromboembolic events overall in vaccinated people seems not to be higher than that seen in the general population.’ She said the EMA remains ‘firmly convinced’ that the benefits of the Astra Zeneca outweigh any risks and admitted she was worried about the effects of the suspensions on vaccine trust among citizens.

She added: ‘Thousands of people are dying across the EU every day. We have authorised for highly effective Covid vaccines that can protect against severe Covid disease. These are very rare thromboembolic events, or blood clots. We need to evaluate these very carefully.’ 

Elsewhere, Stella Kyriakides, health commissioner of the European Commission, urged countries to start protecting citizens again by giving them the jab.

Speaking following a virtual meeting of EU health ministers in Brussels, she said: ‘Even with the immense and regrettable challenges around production capacity and deliveries, there are reports of unused reservoirs of vaccines across the European Union.

‘We currently see the proportions of available vaccine doses distributed range from 50 to 100 per cent across member states.

‘Every dose counts and every dose is providing a protective shield for our health workers, our elderly, or our vulnerable groups.’ EU governments have so far used just 48 million doses out of 62.2 million delivered so far, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

Almost 15 million of those doses were supplied by UK-based drugs giant AstraZeneca, with more than 7.5 million of the unused vaccines now said to be sitting unused in fridges.

Germany’s national disease centre warned that the country is now in the grips of a third wave and facing an exponential rise in cases, that could see it break previous records within weeks.

The crisis has led Angela Merkel’s closest ally, the Bavarian regional leader, Markus Söder, to break ranks, telling German television he would take the vaccine ‘immediately’.

The chancellor was also accused of having ‘no clear policy’ by her main coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD), who called on Jens Spahn, the health minister, to resign.

As the row intensified, the German Health Ministry tried to justify its decision by announcing further details about the cases which had led to the decision.

It revealed there had been seven cases of cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT), a rare type of blood clot, three of which had been fatal, out of the 1.6 million people vaccinated so far.

It said the cases were in conjunction with thrombocytopenia, a condition characterised by abnormally low levels of platelets, with experts adding they would only have expected between 1 to 1.4 cases in the fortnight following vaccination.

The statement said: ‘This illness is so serious… that it would not be responsible to continue vaccinating without an investigation,’ adding that it was ‘striking that young people, too, were affected, especially women’.

Germany’s Paul Ehrlich Institute said the condition is ‘so serious that it is not justifiable to continue vaccinating without testing’.

Panic set in amid reports of blood clots after AstraZeneca’s vaccine, but data shows the same number of clots occurred after Pfizer vaccines – which Europe continues to use – and that none of the clots are actually linked to the shots

Figures from AstraZeneca and the European Medicines Agency show the number of blood clot-related conditions from 17million doses dished out in the UK and Europe up to March 13

However, German newspaper BILD appeared to hit back at the suggestion, with the headline: ‘Thrombosis risk after vaccination at 0.0004 percent while the opposition Free Democrat Party said the German government had ‘unnecessarily endangered human lives’.

The UK’s drug regulators appear to have spotted the condition five times in 11million doses – but have yet to comment on Germany’s figures.

Data from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) regulator in the UK has also shown more people have reported blood clots after having Pfizer’s vaccine than the Oxford one – even though Pfizer’s jab has not been suspended anywhere.

The MHRA said that, in the UK up until February 28, it had received 30 reports of blood clots in people who had the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab and 38 reports associated with Pfizer/BioNTech.

It said more than 11 million doses of AstraZeneca had been given in the UK so far.

‘Such reports are not proven side effects of the vaccine. Blood clots can occur naturally and are not uncommon,’ a statement said.

The WHO released a statement yesterday afternoon saying there had been reports of clots in ‘very few people’, but ‘there are several aspects of these cases which require careful evaluation, including the age of patients, clinical features and severity of conditions’.

It added: ‘This data is now being collected and carefully reviewed by WHO and the European Medicines Agency. At this time, we do not know whether some or all of the conditions have been caused by the vaccine or by other coincidental factors. As soon as the review is finalised, we will inform of any findings.

‘For the moment, based on the evidence reviewed to date by the EMA, the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing hospitalisation and death due to Covid-19 outweigh the risks of side effects.’ 

Earlier, the director general of Italy’s medicines authority, Nicola Magrini, told Italian daily newspaper la Repubblica that the decision by some European countries to suspend the roll-out was a ‘political one’.

Jens Spahn, Germany’s health minister, was facing down calls for his resignation today over his decision to block AstraZeneca jabs – while Angela Merkel (left) saw her party slump to its lowest poll rating of the crisis as people lost faith in her leadership

He said the vaccine was safe and added: ‘We got to the point of a suspension because several European countries, including Germany and France, preferred to interrupt vaccinations… to put them on hold in order to carry out checks. The choice is a political one.’ 

According to AstraZeneca, about 17 million people in the EU and the UK have received a dose of the vaccine, with fewer than 40 cases of blood clots reported.

Last night, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said the EU crisis was ‘obviously a matter for those countries’ but stressed the World Health Organization has been clear that the AZ vaccine is both safe and effective.

Asked how the Government would allay concerns at home, the spokesman said: ‘We continue to roll out both vaccines and we continue to see an incredibly high take up in terms of those who are offered the vaccine.

‘As you will have seen over recent days and weeks we continue to provide the vaccine to literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people every day and we will continue to roll the vaccine programme out.

‘You’ve heard the MHRA come out and be extremely clear that both vaccines are both safe and effective.

‘Anybody who’s invited to come forward to take a vaccine should do so.’ Peter Openshaw, professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London, said the decision to pause rollout of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab could be a ‘disaster’ for vaccine uptake in Europe.

Asked what he would say to those in the UK who are booked to receive the vaccine, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I really wouldn’t be worried at the present time.

‘I think it is very clear that the benefits of being vaccinated at the moment so far outweigh the possible concern over this rather rare type of blood clot.’

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