It’s a travesty of truth that Europe blames Astra for its vaccine mess
How quickly the tables turn. Once routinely demonised by all the usual suspects as price-gouging profiteers and monopolists, Big Pharma unexpectedly found itself the hero of the moment as the pandemic spread, developing effective vaccine solutions in double-quick time. But now the industry is back in the dog house again, at least in Europe.
Don’t blame the European Commission for the slow pace of the vaccine rollout, an Italian MP insisted at the weekend. Blame the drug companies instead. They are the ones that have let us down. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the commission, is similarly keen to deflect the blame on to the Anglo-Swedish pharma giant AstraZeneca.
Syringes filled with doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine at a private medical practice in Germany. Credit:Getty Images
So please don’t call it “vaccine nationalism” when Italy uses emergency powers to ban the export of a consignment of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine to Australia. Rather, call it standing up to Big Pharma, or determination to enforce legal contract against a firm that has negligently overpromised and underdelivered in a rush for market share. What utter tosh.
The latest outbreak of recrimination is understandable enough, I suppose, given the seriousness of Europe’s position, with economically crippling lockdown measures likely to have to be widely extended to compensate for vaccine strategy failings. But never mind the truth, the continued blame shifting is also a travesty of sure-footed policymaking. The EU only doubles down on the damage it is doing to itself by treating Astra as a political football.
COVID vaccine suppliers are under similar attack at the World Trade Organisation and the World Health Organisation, the director generals of which both urge Western producers to change their approach and share their vaccines equally with the developing world, rather than pursuing the current “me first” strategy of prioritising their own citizens.
People standing in line at a COVID-19 vaccination centre in Rome: Facing backlash over his country’s slow vaccination campaign, it hasn’t taken Prime Minister Mario Draghi long to descend into the gutter of Italian politics.Credit:Bloomberg
It’s water under the bridge now, but that hasn’t stopped the scapegoating. It was odd, in some respects, to see a globalist as considered as Mario Draghi, the latest in Italy’s constantly changing kaleidoscope of prime ministers, become the first to assume the vaccine nationalism mantle. As the man who supposedly “saved the euro”, he’s meant to be a super-rational internationalist, but it hasn’t taken him long to descend into the gutter of Italian politics. By acting as he did, he even managed to win plaudits from the ultra-Eurosceptic Lega Nord head, Matteo Salvini. Clever, or what?
Actually, not clever at all. If this unelected technocrat now looks for legitimacy from populist rabble raisers such as Salvini, he really is in trouble.
Great disservice
By blocking a tiny contingent of Astra vaccines to Australia, vialled and packaged in Italy, he sends out a couple of powerfully destructive messages.
One: don’t invest in Italy, lest you find yourself sanctioned. Two: don’t expect your orders to be satisfied from other parts of the global supply chain if you are effectively going to gum it up yourself. For instance, a large part of the next batch of Astra doses for Britain is coming from India. If India were likewise to hoard the product, the UK too would be in trouble. By banning the export of vaccines, Italy and the EU only shoot themselves in the foot.
The EU does itself a great disservice by disparaging Astra in the way it has. Evidence that its vaccine is as effective if not more so as the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna alternatives grows by the day. To boot, it costs a lot less and is much easier to deliver.
Astra is moreover a major supplier to the COVAX international effort to get vaccines distributed quickly to poorer countries, unlike Pfizer, which has seemingly put profit before all other considerations, selling largely only to those prepared to pay the most.
Against the 340 million doses Astra has agreed to supply to COVAX, Pfizer has committed a paltry 1.2 million. Astra’s largesse is much more likely to deliver results than having the WTO abolish intellectual property rights.
And yet in Europe, Pfizer/BioNTech are seen as the good guys. By trying to do the right thing, Astra by contrast gets beaten up.
I hesitate to join the unseemly cacophony of triumphant Brussels bashing we see in the UK these days – itself a form of scapegoating for failings at home – but the EU really only has itself to blame for the mess it has got itself into.
The Daily Telegraph, London
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