Quote:
Originally Posted by Damien
In principle, the EU's decision to source the vaccine as a block rather than have member states compete against each other makes sense.
The problem is the Commission screwed up the procurement by being to slow to act. They took too long to place orders, they didn't place enough orders and they had a scattergun approach to which vaccines to back so out of the too few orders they had a bunch of them didn't get to release.
That last point is the true success of the U.K effort. Really placing large orders early shouldn't have been that difficult a task but the thing the U.K clearly did well was pick the right vaccines to back.
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Agreed, the way that the EMA works with having a multilevel approval process (drug approval, market approval, country approval) just isn't nimble enough in an emergency situation. The 'big bloc' approach definitely drove the costs down but, in this case, money pretty much wasn't an issue.
I was having a look earlier on what vaccines were ordered and possibly why and there's no consistent theme to explain the difference between the decisions the UK and EU made (if we take any suggestion of vaccine nationalism out of the equation) The main vaccine types are;
mRNA - the biggest unknown in that these have never been really used as drugs but really simple and quick to test
Pfizer/BioNTech - UK 40m, EU 600m
Moderna - UK 17m, EU 160m
Curevac - UK 50m, EU 405m
Adenovirus - bit more tested/known technology
AZ/Oxford - UK 100m, EU 400m
Janssen - UK 30m, EU 400m
Inactivated virus/virus subunits - classic vaccine, safest bet but the longest lead time
GSK/Sanofi - UK 60m, EU 300m
Novavax - UK 60m, EU 200m
Valneva - UK 100m, EU 60m
There's no real big differences in the purchasing decisions. There are differences in the proportions of each vaccine contracted between the UK and EU but no fundamental differences in what was ordered - the UK and EU bet on the same horses. It seems that speed was the winner here rather than betting on the wrong things.