Australia is paying for intransigence by European Union leaders using the pandemic to bolster their aims for a Federated Europe.
Last year when vaccine developers were in early stage trials to develop coronavirus vaccines, the French leader Emmanuel Macron was juggling promoting a cohesive Europe, yet protecting French interests. He insisted that his pharmaceutical giant, Sanofi, should be part of a collective EU order.
Across in Germany where the BioNTech jab was being developed, the German chancellor Angela Merkel ignored the advantages of her home-grown product and handed the German vaccination program entirely to Brussels.
Brussels bureaucrats then bungled the orders, delaying placing any orders until late August while they liaised with the 27 member countries and then when they did, they discovered the 300 million order of the Sanofi vaccine was in trouble and may not even eventuate.
The UK, meanwhile, had placed the AstraZeneca order — for 100 million doses — back in May and laboratories were gearing up to produce the vaccine as soon as the trials had finished and regulatory approval had been obtained.
Cue some vaccine politicking on the continent as the UK sped ahead. Macron declared the UK developed AstraZeneca vaccine was “almost ineffective in the over-65s’’ and Merkel refused to take the AstraZeneca jab claiming she was in the wrong age group to receive it. The EU took a month longer than the UK, until the end of January, to approve the AstraZeneca vaccine, of which it had ordered 400 million doses.
Problems in the Brussels laboratory led to AstraZeneca officials halving their expected production early in the year, but EU leaders blamed the UK, falsely claiming Belgium supplies were being hijacked by the UK.
A raid on the Belgium plant showed that there were indeed production problems, in part because of the late orders placed by Brussels.
In the meantime demands for the AstraZeneca vaccines by the European public plunged because of their leaders’ ambivalence about the vaccine. Germany currently has 1.4 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in storage.
But suddenly, almost overnight, the AstraZeneca jab is back in demand. A recent Scottish study showed that the AstraZeneca jab was as effective as BioNTech, and the dramatic plunge in infections and deaths in the UK is directly attributed to 31 million Britons receiving a coronavirus jab, mostly the AstraZeneca type.
This week Germany and France approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for approval for their over-65s, not coincidentally at a time when supplies of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are being restricted.
Last week Mario Draghi, the new Italian prime minister urged other EU leaders to go “faster, faster’’ to roll out the vaccines. And on Thursday, with the backing of Brussels, he stopped the AstraZeneca shipment to Australia.
The impact on Australia in practical terms will be a few weeks delay, for the CSL-licensed manufacture of the AstraZeneca vaccine is due to rollout around a million doses a week from the end of March.
But for other non-EU countries, the Australian ban is a taste of what is to come.
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