U.K., EU fix delivery issue for vaccines

LONDON — The British government said Saturday that it does not expect any disruptions to its orders for coronavirus vaccines after the European Union emphasized it would not trigger an emergency provision of the Brexit deal as part of its strategy to monitor export of doses produced in the EU.

Cabinet Minister Michael Gove said the government expects the vaccines to be supplied as planned after the EU addressed the “mistake” in its plan to tighten export rules for COVID-19 vaccines produced in the 27 member nations.

The U.K. government complained late Friday that the bloc had invoked an emergency clause in its divorce deal with Britain to introduce controls on exports from EU member Ireland into Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K.

After a call between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the EU’s executive commission, the EU said it was not invoking the article of the Brexit agreement allowing either side to override parts of the deal.

Gove said Johnson was “very clear” in the call to stress that the U.K. has contractual arrangements with pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and Pfizer.

While the U.K. has made progress in its campaign to vaccinate the population against the coronavirus, the EU has faced criticism for its slow start.

Concerns over the rollout across the EU’s 27 member nations grew last week after British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca said it could not supply EU members with as many doses as originally anticipated because of production capacity limits.

But the European Commission suspected that doses meant for Europe might have been diverted from an AstraZeneca plant on the continent to the U.K., where two other company sites are located.