Italy was one of the first countries that made a decision to impose a ban on corona virus vaccine on Thursday after a shipment of over 250,000 AstraZeneca jabs were blocked from going into Australia. It was Brussels that made the introduction to export transparency regime as there was a disagreement over a supply shortfall with the British – Swedish pharma company at the end of January. Under this new rule the manufacturers of the vaccine in the EU must get the approval from national authorities in the country of production and the European Commission before exporting the vaccine anywhere outside of the EU. The allies to EU including Britain have heightened concerns about this regime which was an answer to the fears that the vaccines that were purchased by Brussels is being shipped elsewhere.
It was Italy that took the first step and blocked the vaccines from going to Australia. Mario Draghi who took office in February as the Italian Prime Minister urged the EU leaders to make the vaccination block sooner rather than later.
AstraZeneca in January cut its supplies to the EU in the first quarter to 40 million doses from 90 million foreseen in the contract, and later said it would cut deliveries by another 50% in the second quarter. The EU is lagging far behind countries such as the US, Britain and Israel in its vaccination roll-out and Brussels has blamed the supply shortfalls. The company says it did not break its contract with the EU, which negotiated for the jabs as a bloc but refused to comment on the ban. An EU official confirmed the commission had approved the ban.
A spokesperson for Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt stated at a press interview that the blocked shipment “was not factored into our distribution plan for coming weeks. The AstraZeneca rollout begins on Friday in Murray Bridge South Australia. The first international shipment already arrived which takes us through to the commencement of domestic CSL supplies. This is one shipment from one country. Domestic production starts with one million per week of deliveries from late March and is on track.”
Italy has 1.5m AstraZeneca vaccines and administered 322,800 doses. In total, it has given out 4.3m vaccines from all companies. The EU has administered out 8.02 doses per 100 people, while the UK has given out 32.34 doses. AstraZeneca had requested permission to export the 250,000 doses from its Anagni plant, near Rome. The plant is handing the final stage of production – the so-called fill and finishing of its COVID-19 vaccine. The site is owned by US group Catalent that was expected to handle hundreds of millions of AstraZeneca doses over the coming 12 months. Britain feared it would be the first victim of the EU vaccine ban at the height of the commission’s row with AstraZeneca in January. There were suspicions in Brussels that EU AstraZeneca jabs had been shipped to the UK? The commission drew a lot of negative criticism at the height of its row with AstraZeneca when it threatened to trigger Article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol, which would impose a hard border on the island of Ireland. All this was done so that there was a stop to vaccine smuggling into Britain from Northern Ireland.
