UK: We’ll help EU out with jab

Britain set to change its tack in tussle over vaccines

BRITAIN may relent in its vaccine impasse with the EU and start sending Covid jabs, a senior British minister said yesterday.

International trade minister Liz Truss said it was in the UK’s interests to help slow the pandemic around the world, admitting: ‘It won’t benefit people in Britain if we become a vaccinated island and many other countries don’t have the vaccine.’

The British government has indicated that no jabs will be diverted abroad before February 15, by which time the 15million most vulnerable there should have been vaccinated.

But asked directly whether jabs could be sent abroad before September, when all British adults are due to have been offered the vaccine, Ms Truss said: ‘That could well be the case, but I can’t preempt what the situation will be in two months’ time.’

A British government source played down her comments, saying

‘Not a consideration in next few months’

that with the country still recording 1,000 deaths a day, diverting vaccines abroad ‘is not going to be a consideration in the next few months’.

It came as Downing Street sought to draw a line under a row with Brussels triggered by an extraordinary EU bid to block vaccine exports to Britain.

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen was forced into a climbdown after threatening to impose a hard border on the island of Ireland to prevent vaccines from the EU getting into the UK.

As a result of the row, Brussels was forced to reassure Canada that its contracted supplies from Pfizer’s factory in Belgium would not be disrupted.

Japan warned against acting in a ‘nationalistic’ way, and South Korea said ‘global disunity’ would hinder the fight against the pandemic.

Ms Truss yesterday said the UK government could now ‘absolutely guarantee’ that people would get their second Pfizer dose – and that vaccines ordered from plants in the EU would continue to arrive.

In a round of media interviews, she said Ms von der Leyen had promised British prime minister Boris Johnson ‘there will be no disruption of contracts that we have with any producer in the EU and that’s a really important principle’. She said it was now time for the bloc to move away from ‘vaccine nationalism’.

In a further sign of compromise, Ms von der Leyen said yesterday the EU was accepting an offer of an additional nine million doses of vaccine from AstraZeneca – after the row started last week because the manufacturer said it would be delivering just 31million doses to the EU before the end of March, less than half the amount originally planned, due to production issues.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin yesterday confirmed he had not been informed in advance of the EU’s plan to partially close the border with Northern Ireland. He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that Brussels appeared to have been ‘blindsided’ about the implications for the island of Ireland.

Unionists stepped up calls for the scrapping of the Northern Ireland protocol, which has been blamed for post-Brexit shortages in the region. DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds said ministers should now act to get rid of the ‘insidious effects’ of the protocol. However, Mr Martin insisted the protocol, which is designed to prevent a hard border, was ‘a good thing’.

In a conciliatory move, he said there were ‘issues that we have to fine tune and work out’. Even the EU’s most ardent backers condemned its recent actions, with Tony Blair describing the bloc’s behaviour as ‘very foolish’.

Meanwhile, Britain carried out a record number of vaccinations in a single day at the weekend – after inoculating almost 610,000 people against Covid-19.

It means nearly 9million people there have now had their first jab – and takes the UK closer to its target of vaccinating 15million people by mid-February.

A total of 609,010 jabs were recorded across the UK on Saturday – made up of 598,389 first doses and 10,621 second doses. It was a huge leap on the previous record, achieved on January 23, when 493,013 people received a jab.

British health minister Matt Hancock said it meant three-quarters of those aged 75 to 79, and fourfifths of those over 80 have now been vaccinated.

The UK’s total is equal to the combined vaccines delivered in Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, Belgium, Portugal and the Netherlands.