The United Kingdom, so far a world-leader in the vaccination game, may be forced to slow the pace of shots after a major supplier nation decided it would keep more of its production for its own people.
The British government and the National Health Service (NHS) announced this week that a “significant reduction” in vaccine supply was on the horizon, caused by a “reduction in national inbound supply”. The reason for this development was not explained, and the health secretary played down the issue, insisting that it was normal for vaccine supply to be “lumpy”.
The constriction in supply captured imaginations, however, as it came as the Europen Union engaged in its latest bout of vaccine nationalism. Having recently blocked the export of one Australia-bound batch of European-made vaccine, the bloc warned it would very likely seize other shipments for its own nationals as well, in a message clearly directed at the United Kingdom.
The EU has attempted to block vax exports to Britain, accused UK of blocking exports, acknowledged that UK hasn’t actually banned the export of vaccines, before immediately again implying the UK wasn’t exporting after all. That claim was repeated today. https://t.co/amBeLny96g
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 17, 2021
Yet now it has been revealed the vaccine supply issue leads back to India, where the government has taken the extraordinary step of instructing pharmaceutical companies to block exports of shipments made for other nations, so it can deploy them at home.
India’s Serum Institute, one of the world’s largest producers of vaccinations which partnered with Oxford-AstraZeneca early on to produce their forumulation in volume, told British newspaper The Daily Telegraph that the delay was “solely” by design of the Indian government. The Institute’s CEO, Adar Poonawalla said his organisation could not simply ramp up production to meet demand because of a shortage of raw materials.
In comments to the paper, he repeated claims he made earlier in March — and echoed elsewhere, including by the European Union — that the United States was blocking the export of vaccine ingredients. Poonawalla called the policy, which the Telegraph reported was achieved through a “Korean War-era law blocking [of] key components from leaving the US” which he described as “raw materials nationalism”.
Blair Blames Brexit… for EU Vaccine Fiasco https://t.co/M3ShTwVnCH
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) March 11, 2021
The Indian government officially denied there was an official export ban in place, but obliquely admitted to one existing in practice. The report noted the comment of foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who said exports depended on an “assessment of adequate availability at home”.
Thanks to decisive early action by the British government, the United Kingdom has been at the front of the pack of large nations in vaccinations this year. Indeed, by early February the UK — population 67 million — had managed to vaccinate more people than the whole 500 million people of the European Union combined. Today, the United Kingdom has managed to administer 40 coronavirus vaccines per 100 people, whereas the European Union has administered 12.
While the United Kingdom has an advanced pharmaceutical research industry and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was one of the first to enter use, the reliance on plants in the European Union and India to actually manufacture doses at volume — both of which appear to be compromised by foreign governments determined to hold back vaccines for themselves — underlines serious issues in supply chain security faced by the nation.
This situation leaves the UK dangerously vulnerable to the whims of foreign powers, lawmakers have warned, not just during the present pandemic but during any future emergency where the supply of critical materiel would likely remain in the gift of potentially malevolent foreign powers, like dictatorships Turkey and China.
In 2020, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s ‘Project Defend‘ followed claims of 71 critical goods that the United Kingdom was reliant on countries like China for. The project said it would investigate bolstering “onshore” production, and maybe even repatriating manufacturing of some essential supplies.
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