Thread by @jonworth

A little counterfactual

What if AstraZeneca had no exclusive 💉 agreement with UK, and had in Q1 supplied both UK and EU equally as a proportion of population from its UK and EU plants?

(Please don't shout at me "they didn't" (I know), "there was different funding arrangements" (I know), "UK started earlier" (I know) - those points are not central as you will see)

Getting stats on AZ deliveries to both UK and EU is complex. EU we can estimate pretty closely based on yesterday's COMM statement, and the Anagni doses - 29 million in Q1

UK is harder, as we have doses administered, and those stats have a time lag, and delivery to being administered has a time lag too - so here I will charitably use a figure of 20m doses to UK in Q1

Estimate based on:
gov.uk/government/pub…

So in summary:

🇪🇺 29m doses, 330m adult population - ratio 0.087
🇬🇧 20m doses, 50m adult population - ratio 0.398

Adjust that to get equal ratios:

🇪🇺 42m doses, 330m adult population - ratio 0.139
🇬🇧 7m doses, 50m adult population - ratio 0.127

That means that - based on rough estimates - the UK's exclusive agreement with AZ has left it 13m doses better off, and EU 13m doses worse off

Without those doses the UK's vaccination effort would be a good bit behind where it is now

An extra 13m for the EU though... would make comparatively little difference to where EU countries vaccine roll outs currently are

AZ shipments to EU in Q1 are 50m lower than expected!

I understand why AZ's behaviour, and exclusivity of supply to the UK, is annoying for the EU

But even were it *not* the case, the EU's slow vaccine rollout would still only be fractionally less slow. The real problem for the EU is *not* AZ's contract with the UK!

/ends