Here’s how Johnson is winning the vaccination race (with great Brussels and Eurolyric gnawing)
Careful approach, but organization and real financial firepower. Thus Boris Johnson manages to vaccinate 27 British citizens per second, over 800,000 per day, when all the countries of the European Union together vaccinate just over 900,000, and to keep in line with two primary objectives: to reopen the country without restrictions on 21 June, and to vaccinate the entire adult population by the end of July.
Of course, Brexit also lent a hand to the Tory government, giving it more leeway in the face of the relentless Brussels negotiations that later revealed the disaster of the Von Der Leyen Commission. But the "British miracle" – so emphatically called it a newspaper that spoke of "British drama" just a few months ago – has more to do with a vaccine planning policy and with a choice made more than a year ago.
It was March 6, 2020 when Boris Johnson, who had not yet closed the country due to the coronavirus , announced the first allocation of 44 million pounds for a vaccine to help the UK get rid of the disease. Then more appropriations came, making London the largest national contributor to the Global Alliance for Vaccines, GAVI, an association whose ranks are pulled by the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation , Unicef and the World Bank. GAVI is the hat inside which there is CoVax , the program to distribute vaccines in the 92 poorest countries in the world and which sees the United Kingdom contribute with 250 million pounds and with over 1 billion pounds of private donations. "The virus must be defeated globally," Johnson recently told the G7 he chaired, and dedicated to the fight against Covid . A line in line with the new strategy of Global Britain exposed last week to the municipalities by the premier himself and by the foreign minister Dominic Raab.
Faced with this success, the EU reacted belatedly and clumsily. First of all, it blocked vaccines destined for Belfast for a few hours at the border between the two Ireland, in clear violation of the agreements on Northern Ireland signed on the occasion of Brexit, and without even warning Dublin, a full member of the 27 ; then he threatened the embargo on vaccines that go from European factories to the United Kingdom; and, finally, he cackled at the cry of Europeans First ! , implicitly admitting that Johnson was right when he was concerned, naturally, first with the interests of his country and then with international cooperation.
The case relating to the vaccine produced by the Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca caused a sensation precisely because of the geopolitical question at stake. In the United Kingdom, more than 11 million doses had already been administered in March when 4 leading European countries – Germany, France, Italy and Spain – suspended the administration, alluding to cases of side effects and in clear contrast to what was established by the EMA , who saw no reason to make such a drastic decision. Four days after the stop, in fact, the EMA again pronounced itself in favor of its administration, and the countries that had suspended the doses resumed the injections. The United Kingdom – also supported by the British EMA, the MHRA – has continued on its way by vaccinating with AstraZeneca without ever interrupting the flow of vials and the ranking of vaccinated people.
Finally, the latest controversy, the one on the alleged stocks of vaccines kept "hidden" in Italy – naturally by the perfidious AstraZeneca – and, according to La Stampa , directed towards the United Kingdom in defiance of the EU. Well, it turned out that in reality the offending doses – as many as 29 million – were produced outside the EU (not in the Netherlands), they are located in the Catalent plant in Anagni not in stock but to be filled in, and are intended precisely to the EU countries (16 million) and to the CoVax (13 million), not to the United Kingdom, subject to quality control to be carried out in Belgium. Among other things, due to the export mechanism imposed by the EU, no dose could have left the continent without the consent of the European Commission. Therefore, a no coincidence, the result only of the paranoia of Brussels, which for the occasion had bothered even the Nas and the Minister Speranza had carried out, not satisfied with the false step made with the suspension of AZ to queue up in Berlin.
But if the relations between states, and between states and pharmaceutical companies, have been tense throughout the Covid-19 crisis, all the more reason it seems that the power relations between nations are reaffirmed in the historical moments of emergency, those in which everyone must play your best chips . Precisely for this reason, the European threat to block the export of vaccines to London could clash with the fact that the vaccine produced by Pfizer / BioNtech needs a component that arrives by sea from the United Kingdom, and precisely from Yorkshire. Since vaccinations will not completely eliminate Covid , which many believe will turn into a seasonal flu, it is very likely that even in the short to medium term future we will see new disputes related to drugs, assistance contracts and the delivery of vials of vaccines.
Yesterday evening, the EU and the United Kingdom agreed to commit to "create a win-win situation " on the supply of anti-Covid vaccines, in order to "expand their distribution to all our citizens". But from what we understand there is still no agreement: “We will continue our discussions”.
The post Here's how Johnson is winning the vaccination race (with great Brussels and Eurolyric gnawing) appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/ecco-come-johnson-sta-vincendo-la-corsa-alle-vaccinazioni-con-grandi-rosicamenti-brussellesi-ed-eurolirici/ on Thu, 25 Mar 2021 05:06:00 +0000.