Thread by @jonworth

OK, this is about the best I have found re. the AZ vaccines supply issue - but it's in Dutch and needs a free registration to read!

Exportverbod vaccins kan België in lastig parket brengen

standaard.be/cnt/dmf2021032…

Quotes are Google Translate from Dutch

Most importantly it claims there are 4 million AZ doses at Halix in Leiden

Is it even worth having a fight this major over that number of doses? Perhaps. But either way this won't solve either UK or EU's supply headaches

"The first target of the possible export ban is AZ's Halix site in Leiden. The EU suspects AZ has hesitated to apply for authorization of the site to the EMA to deliver to the UK first"

Not important. Authorized or not, export stats would still have to be submitted to Commission

But the bit that doesn't make sense: why all this fuss about Halix, when there's nothing about the Seneffe AZ plant that *is* manufacturing already, but is *not* exporting to the UK - because were it those numbers would show up in Commission stats

Or - in other words - based on De Standaard and The Times - why does the UK think it has some claim to the doses from Halix but not from Seneffe?

And if both UK *and* EU legitimately have legal claims to supply from Halix, *and* it is assumed it would be too time consuming to take this to court, I assume a negotiated settlement regarding how to allocate Halix production makes sense...

... *but* De Standaard claims the EU thinks it has a legitimate claim to supplies from the two UK AZ plants as well as from Halix, while UK denies this.

This is an absolute mess of claim and counterclaim. We're still a very long way from knowing how to actually solve this.

Given the rather small production so far at Halix, is this worth all the fuss?

/ends