Again Kate Bingham comes out of this well - day 1 coordination with US - this argues, as Id heard, German efforts to push the Biontech (Pfizer) vaccine invented in Germany came up against a bet on sanofi and precautionary principle applied to new mRNA tech nytimes.com/2021/03/20/wor…
Ie EU grabbed this competence in health during crisis from nation states - then applied non crisis value for money procurement & risk averse precautionary principles to programme. Difficult not to see that eg Germany would have done better if this had stayed national competence
As NYT put it and I’ve detailed elsewhere UK & US went into business with the pharma industry as a type of VC partner, and derisked the investments too, and so got hold of the supplies first....
That said, fair to say that if the EU had done what the UK & EU successfully did then the net result of that would have been it would have effectively kept Pfizer/Biontech supplies for itself in first instance, and not exported them to for example the UK... which may still happen
Given that & interdependence, could be tempting for Downing St, given surplus vaccine supplies, to offer to help alleviate EU bottlenecks in mutual interest. Perhaps offer to fully supply RoI and commonwealth EU countries - Malta & cyprus, and guarantee flow of ingredients.
Domestically, supplying RoI makes some sense given common travel area. Commonwealth connections would justify Malta & cyprus...
Noteworthy that India is supplying the Oxford invented vaccine around the world emblazoned with Indian flags tweeted out by its foreign ministers...
Noteworthy that India is supplying the Oxford invented vaccine around the world emblazoned with Indian flags tweeted out by its foreign ministers...
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