6/28/2023 0 Comments Unherd vaccine![]() “The EU Commission is very good at negotiating things like trade deals, but traditionally it hasn’t had competence in such matters as vaccines and contract negotiations, which were left to member states,” Wooldridge pointed out. Brexit made it “easy” for the UK to go its own way on vaccines, Bouzou observed. Member states were free to opt out of this supranational scheme, but none did so. However, Brussels took charge of vaccine procurement in the summer of 2020, as part of what Von der Leyen called a “European Health Union” in her September “State of the Union” address. Last summer there was “no urgency” from the EU because “the contrast with the health calamity in the United States made European officials forget that the pandemic was in fact a state of emergency requiring a decisive approach to vaccination”, Bruno Macaes, a political scientist at Washington DC’s Hudson Institute and former Portuguese Europe minister, wrote in British news magazine UnHerd.īefore Covid-19, the EU left health policy to national governments. “The orders came late and were focused on price it seems like the EU thought vaccines weren’t a priority,” said Nicolas Bouzou, head of Paris-based advisory firm Asterès. ![]() Pfizer offered the EU 500 million doses the same month – but Brussels turned the proposal down, deeming it too expensive, according to an internal EU document seen by Reuters. After Brussels placed its first order in November, the US pharmaceutical giant announced on January 15 major delays in the distribution of jabs to the EU – prompting six countries to write to the commission, complaining of an “unacceptable” situation.Īgain, Britain acted more quickly, buying its Pfizer-BioNTech doses in July. Likewise with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Meanwhile the French government announced it would receive 25 percent fewer Moderna jabs than expected in February. The US biotech firm told the Italian government on January 29 it would supply 20 percent fewer vaccines than planned from early February. The EU has also had procurement problems with the Moderna jab. Brussels asked the Anglo-Swedish firm to divert supplies from the UK, but the firm said its contract with Britain prevented this.īritain negotiated a “much tighter contract”, said Adrian Wooldridge, political editor of The Economist and co-author of 'The Wake-Up Call', a book on the Covid-19 pandemic.ĪstraZeneca agreed on February 1 to supply a further 9 million doses to the EU, meaning a total of 40 million doses by the end of March – half of what the EU initially expected. The UK signed its deal three months earlier than the EU, giving AstraZeneca time to iron out logistical issues, the company said. But the Anglo-Swedish firm informed the EU on January 22 that, due to problems at a factory in Belgium, it could only deliver 31 million doses in that timeframe. The EU envisaged some 80 million doses arriving by March. This came amid the EU Commission’s imbroglio with AstraZeneca, which developed its jab with Oxford University. The following day, three French regions including the Paris area faced such a shortfall that they had to suspend injections of first doses to guarantee those already vaccinated their second doses. Spanish authorities stopped all vaccinations in the Madrid region for ten days starting on January 27 because of a lack of jabs. Vaccines are most urgently needed in Portugal – currently the world’s worst Covid-19 hotspot – but the country’s vaccine chief warned on Wednesday that the country “can’t do much more” because the EU has not procured enough jabs. The UK has vaccinated more than 10 million people – the third-highest rate behind Israel and the UAE – after assembling the biggest vaccine stockpile per capita last year. Due to this, Phillips assumed he was immune and didn’t need to get vaccinated.Thanks to a troubled procurement programme, the EU’s vaccination rate is around a fifth of Britain’s. The first time was in January 2020, and a test found that he had antibodies. Phillips told KUSA that he caught the virus twice. He now believes everyone should get vaccinated against COVID-19. But physicality isn’t the only transformation Phillips underwent from his daunting near-death experience. He said his prior ability to “bench press 300 pounds or run a mile straight up a hill” didn’t reduce his symptoms, and he is still on oxygen. He spent 47 days intubated and lost 70 pounds, the Denver Post reported. Up until about two weeks ago, the 56-year-old was in a medically induced coma and was hooked up to a ventilator. The Colorado fitness expert - who worked as a performance nutrition and supplementation expert for the Denver Broncos in the late 1990s and is the author of “Body-for-LIFE” - almost died after a two-month battle with COVID-19 because he didn’t think he needed a vaccine.
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