Vaccine efforts a sticky fight across Europe
Squabbles between rich nations threaten to deny doses to poorer countries
BRUSSELS — There was little effort to mask the gloating, just one month after Britain’s full — and, at times, tempestuous — divorce from the European Union.
In big bold type, the vaccination table produced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative party showed that the U.K. had administered more jabs than the EU’s four biggest countries combined. The implication was clear: Britain had been right to make the momentous decision of leaving the bloc.
It also indicated how, beyond the medical complexity, the humanitarian needs and the personal pain felt across the continent, the pandemic is also an intense political fight.
It’s not just the age-old acrimony between the European mainland and the United Kingdom. Germany has by far the most important election on the continent coming up in September, and there too COVID-19 is already showing its corrosive impact.
One guiding principle runs through most of the debate. The crisis, that’s already killed well over half a million Europeans, and the solution, with vaccines far too scarce, are such that nations say: We need to take care of our own people first, whatever the consequences.
“This is obviously sort of what’s being called vaccine nationalism. And you know — this is big politics,” said Robert Yates, director of the global health program at the Chatham House think-tank in London.
Compounding the political implications is the power play between strong governments and the giants of industry, in this case Big Pharma. And from the sidelines, poor nations can only watch as rich nations go for each other’s throats.
“What’s much worse is that these squabbles between rich countries … potentially deny vaccines to people in the rest of the world,” Yates said.
Much of that political bile pools together in the small Belgian industrial town of Seneffe south of Brussels. That’s where Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca said last week there had been problems in the complicated process of making mass quantities of the vaccine. As a result, from a first batch of 80 million doses only 31 million would be delivered.
It was a sucker punch for the 27-nation EU, which has staked its credibility on a massive, quick and smooth rollout of the vaccines for its population of 450 million.
Quickly eyes turned to recently-departed Britain, which has two AstraZeneca plants that are also included in the EU’s delivery contract.
EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides insisted late Wednesday that, if need be, “the U.K. factories are part of our advance purchase agreements, and this is why they have to deliver.”
It’s indicative of the tension and suspicion that Belgium said Thursday it has sent inspectors to the Seneffe plant, to look into the reported production problems and possible suspect movements.