Vaccine Fight Between EU and U.K. Threatens to Escalate

 A fight between the European Union and the U.K. over vaccine supplies is demonstrating how securing national access to doses can generate conflict among U.S. allies and underlining the vulnerability of successful Covid-19 vaccine rollouts to the breakdown of international supply chains.

Tensions have been rising for months between the EU, where governments have stumbled in their vaccine campaigns, and the U.K., which left the bloc last year. The U.K. has delivered at least one shot of Covid-19 vaccine to more than 40% of its population in one of the world's speediest inoculation rollouts.

This week, senior EU and U.K. officials are in talks to try to prevent a further escalation of a fight over vaccine supplies from a Dutch factory that officials say could quickly develop into mutual bans on exports of vaccines and vaccine supplies between the two sides.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called EU leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel this weekend and "reiterated the importance of countries not placing export restrictions on vaccines," according to a U.K. spokeswoman.

The Dutch plant is a manufacturing site for the vaccine developed in the U.K. by AstraZeneca PLC and the University of Oxford, from which both the U.K. and EU hoped to source vaccines.

The EU has complained that AstraZeneca has fallen short of its pledges to deliver vaccines to the EU by tens of millions of doses. AstraZeneca says it has made best efforts but has been unable to meet the EU's expectations because of production problems and export curbs.

EU leaders are meeting on Thursday to discuss tightening a vaccine export ban that could be used against the U.K., with some of them facing intense domestic political pressure over their handling of the pandemic. Governments in Germany and France are imposing new economic restrictions to slow rising infections, which faltering vaccine rollouts show no signs of curbing.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen heightened tensions last week, singling out the U.K. in warning that the EU could block vaccines to countries that were refusing to export vaccines to the bloc. In recent weeks, London called in EU officials to protest EU claims the U.K. had a vaccine export ban in place. Some EU leaders have also, without evidence, questioned the effectiveness of the U.K.-developed AstraZeneca vaccine.

Since late January, the U.K. has imported around 10 million doses from the EU, mostly of the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE produced in Belgium and Germany, according to European Commission data. The U.K. has ordered a total of 40 million Pfizer doses. Meanwhile, the U.K. has exported no vaccine to the EU.

The export ban, which EU leaders will discuss Thursday, permits member states to block vaccine exports with the support of the European Commission, the EU's executive body. It has only been used once since its introduction in late January.

EU diplomats have said that failing an agreement, leaders are expected to agree to effectively ban AstraZeneca exports to the U.K. on Thursday. The fear among officials on both sides is that could push Britain to retaliate by restricting vaccine ingredient supplies vital to European production, which in turn could put at risk Pfizer exports to the U.K.

EU diplomats say that some governments, including Italy, are already pushing for the bloc to stop Pfizer vaccine exports to the U.K. and officials on both sides have said the EU has so far given no guarantees that further Pfizer exports will be permitted.

The Dutch site, operated by Halix BV, is a small piece of AstraZeneca's global supply chain which has been sitting on a growing stockpile of vaccine products since January, people familiar with discussions say. The company would give no figures on the amount.

Both sides claim they have a contract that commits the factory to supply them with that vaccine and the talks this week are over whether they can find a formula to share Halix's vaccines to allow them to be delivered to "fill and finish" sites in the U.K. and the EU.

The Halix site was primarily used to produce vaccines for clinical trials before moving into manufacturing for mass rollouts, AstraZeneca executives said Monday. The factory doesn't yet have approval from the European Medicines Agency to send vaccines elsewhere in the EU. AstraZeneca said Monday it expects to get that approval in coming weeks.

Vaccine manufacturers are relying on complex supply networks during a time of fierce competition for raw ingredients, packaging and other components that has led to shortages and bottlenecks.

Raw vaccine substance in some cases is manufactured in one country and shipped to another for packing into vials even before it is sent to yet another country for use. Any hiccup along the way can impede the process, slowing production and deliveries and costing lives.

The EU has already entered discussions with the U.S. aimed at preventing any interruption to the others' vaccine supply chains. EU officials have signaled they wouldn't block exports to the U.S. even though the bloc has exported around a million doses across the Atlantic without receiving vaccines back.

"We are highly dependent on our global supply network," AstraZeneca's Ruud Dobber told reporters in a briefing Monday about the results of large-scale U.S. human trials of the vaccine.

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