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And you are just being selective in your ire - you suffer from confirmation bias if the EU does something wrong, but if other countries do the same thing, you just ignore it/shrug it off.. :erm:

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I'm not sure AstraZeneca would be allowed to slow the UK vaccination programme down by exporting vaccinations from the UK right now. In the future, yes.

---------- Post added at 20:40 ---------- Previous post was at 20:35 ----------

The EMA approved it.

What's held it back is sovereign EU countries placing more restrictions on its use. Furthermotre countries like France are traditionally more vaccine-averse than the UK. Plus AstraZeneca is not an experienced vaccine manufacturer (unlike say Merck) so made a few submission mistakes.

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Australia should be coming online with home grown AZ vaccine soon. It's going to made at CSL near Melbourne. Here's a really nice article on how the vaccine is made - https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/...uring/13140104

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I think more on the lines of the UK government allowing the sending of vaccine doses to replace those the Italians are blocking.

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There is no spare AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK to send outside the country. It's all committed to our vaccination programme. Export it and the UK vaccination programme slows down.

---------- Post added at 10:43 ---------- Previous post was at 10:39 ----------

Neat article.
The home-grown manufacturing probably explains in part Australia's muted reaction to Italy's export ban.

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So, the EU based factories making the AZ vaccine cannot produce enough to meet demand, they can go whistle for UK produced vaccine. Australia based factories making the AZ vaccine cannot produce enough to meet demand, fill your boots...

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"Perfidious ****, disreputed, gobshites, vindictive, drop of a hat, pig headed, self righteous, pompous, etc., etc."

Let the emotive vitriolic diatribes begin! :D

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Not me though i don't want it.;)

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Do we now campaign for the USA to approve the AZ vaccine or are they allowed to continue clinical trials?

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What makes you think the comment was about you?

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You're great value, I'll give you that. :D

Personally I don't care whether the German or the French governments approve of the AstraZeneca vaccine or not, except in the sense that it's mildly entertaining watching them sabotage their own vaccination programmes even as they desperately try to big up European endeavour post-Brexit. Whether or not individual national medicines agencies have acted truly without political interference is neither here nor there. The politically-inspired messaging that followed those decisions in certain key EU member states is the reason they are having vaccine uptake problems now.

Over in the USA, the FDA is being famously slow. It is well known for shredding conclusions offered to them by drug companies, going back to the raw data, examining it closely and forming conclusions of its own from scratch. This takes time. Are they prioritising domestic vaccine producers as well? Probably. Do I care ... no.

Italy's export refusal is the more interesting development this week. For my money that is more likely to have a long-term effect on levels of trust between nations, although I also note Australia doesn't seem enormously concerned. This is most likely due to their low infection rates and the fact that domestic production of AZ is about to begin.