EU block on vaccine exports ‘not a one-off ’

URSULA VON DER LEYEN, European Commission president, warned yesterday that the bloc could halt further exports of the coronavirus vaccine, after Italy stopped a shipment to Australia.

“That was not a one-off,” she told business weekly Wirtschaftswoche.

Rome last week revealed it had blocked the export of 250,700 doses of Astrazeneca’s vaccine meant for Australia, blaming the shortage of jabs in virus-hit Europe and the lack of urgent need in Australia.

The commission chief also yesterday said she expects the bloc to receive 100 million doses of coronavirus vaccines every month from April, giving a boost to Europe’s stuttering inoculation campaign.

The 27-nation bloc with a population of 446 million people had received 51.5 million doses of vaccines as of Feb 26, according to official data posted on the EU’S website.

The EU has already approved three vaccines – Biontech/pfizer, Astrazeneca/oxford and Moderna – but its inoculation campaign has been hit by delays because of production bottlenecks.

The European Medicines Agency will decide on Thursday whether to authorise Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine, and last week began a rolling review of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.