The UK has been left off a list of more than 120 countries exempted from tighter export restrictions on vaccines produced in the EU, in the latest twist in the bloc’s row with AstraZeneca over a shortage of doses.
Stella Kyriakides, the EU’s health commissioner, said the bloc was not protecting itself “against any specific country” but that it needed to ensure contracted pharmaceutical companies lived up to their promises.
The new export mechanism obliges all vaccine producers to inform national authorities of any intended exports to countries outside a lengthy list of exemptions, with member states empowered to reject applications if they believe EU supplies would be impacted.
The UK joins Russia and Turkey as countries within the vicinity of the EU that have been left off the exemption list. Further afield, the US and Canada are also not included.
Those who cannot be targeted with export bans include neighbouring countries, such as Switzerland and Norway. Outside of Europe, countries exempted include Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Israel, Moldova and Ukraine.
The mechanism raises fears that doses made by Pfizer for the UK market could be at risk of an export ban if the company continues to have its own production problems. Vaccine suppliers will also have to disclose details of their exports over the last three months.
The European commission was enraged by the announcement last Friday by AstraZeneca that it would only be able to deliver 25% of the 100m doses expected before the end of March due to a production glitch at its plant in Belgium.
Brussels has pushed for the shortfall to be made good using imports from AstraZeneca’s UK plants. The company recently assured the UK government that it would be able to satisfy its pledge of delivering 2m doses a week.
AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, has said it is contractually obliged to only export doses from its plants in Oxford and Staffordshire to the EU once it has fulfilled its obligation to the UK. But Brussels believes doses may have been transported from the company’s plants in Belgium and Germany to the UK.
On Friday, the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said it was “crystal clear” that AstraZeneca was bound by its contract to deliver coronavirus vaccine doses produced in the UK.
As AstraZeneca agreed to publish a redacted version of its contract with the commission, Von der Leyen dismissed Soriot’s argument that his company had committed only to make “best efforts” to supply the EU, given the vagaries of the production process and its other contractual obligations.
The commission has paid €336m (£298m) for 400m doses, the first 100m of which were due to be delivered in the first quarter of this year.
“There are binding orders and the contract is crystal clear,” Von der Leyen said. “AstraZeneca has also explicitly assured us in this contract that no other obligations would prevent the contract from being fulfilled.”
She said the “best effort” clause in the AstraZeneca contract with the EU was supposed to refer to the period during which the company was developing the vaccine. “This is now in the past … Once a vaccine is there, there were very clear rules regarding amounts as well as timeframes – they are in the contract – and there are also locations where the vaccine should be produced.”
The UK said it could not publish details of its AstraZeneca supply contract because it would jeopardise national security.
On Friday the EU’s regulator, the European Medicines Agency, authorised the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine for use in all adult age groups. Advance orders of the doses were considered key to building momentum in the bloc’s vaccination effort. Just 2% of the EU adult population have received a vaccine jab, compared with 11% of those in the UK.
The UK has secured 367m doses of the seven most promising vaccines, including 100m doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Those procured by Britain include a vaccine developed by Novavax, which on Thursday said it had proved to have 89% efficacy in a UK trial, and Johnson & Johnson, which on Friday said its shot had between 66% and 72% efficacy.
The lack of doses in the EU has already forced the Spanish government to announce a temporary pause in its rollout in Madrid, and to warn that Catalonia could follow. The public health agency for Paris and the surrounding region, an area with a population of 12.1 million people, informed hospitals on Thursday that it would suspend its programme from 2 February.
Germany’s health minister, Jens Spahn, said on Friday: “We still have some difficult weeks of vaccine shortages ahead of us.”
The ratcheting up of the dispute between AstraZeneca, the commission and the UK weighed heavily on the pharmaceutical company’s share price, as well as the wider market, with the FTSE 100 index on track for its worst trading week since October. AstraZeneca’s shares fell 1.6% on Friday and have fallen by 6% since Tuesday.
The FTSE 100 was trading down 1.54% to 6,425 points, and was on track to wipe out all gains made this month. All the main European indices were also trading about 1% lower.
Additional reporting by Kate Connolly and Rupert Neate