With Ireland suspending AZ now too, I wonder what the impact will be on the UK Considering how dependent we are on AZ - not even necessarily on if we suspend it or not, but more on people's willingness to take the vaccine with all these headlines.

doubt it most ppl think it’s Eu propaganda and jealousy against successful uk vaccine rollout

Do you actually think people think this? Really? :/

The vaccine is half EU anyway and a whole big % of the vaccines we have are EU exports (meanwhile we don't export any - so it is in many parts thanks to the EU the UK vaccine rollout has gone so well).

Of course I do. Remember the criticism from the EU and Fauci when the UK approved Pfizer first, claiming we were rushing?

no it’s uk developed (Oxford) Astra Zeneca (British-Swedish) merely produces it and distributes it so it’s seen as a British vaccine not an EU one.

and right now AZ (uk produced) is much more
prevalent than Pfizer (Belgium produced)

Yes they do. And we have nothing to thank the EU for on this. But. Thread drift approaching. I'm saying no more :)

I am afraid no part of the vaccine success in the Uk is thanks to the Eu as an organisation. I suppose if some of ours happens to be made in the EU we can at least be grateful they haven’t prevented the export of it to the Uk - as italy did for a batch heading to Australia the other week.

Considering the amount of false information that the press and political leaders have put out on the AZ vaccine - partly to cover up the mess they have made of purchase and deployment, perhaps AZ should just cancel the contract and supply countries who are not wanting to engage in silly political games over a public health crisis.

I don’t know anyone that thinks like this. Many will see the EU as being behind the curve in its vaccine programme and wonder why any nation would limit its opportunities to vaccinate by restricting the number of approved vaccines given how much intra-EU criticism there is at the moment.

I have absolutely no doubt that there’s a far greater risk of being adversely affected by Covid than there is in having what I imagine will be an AZ jab tomorrow, but let’s not kid ourselves - there are countries outside the EU that have also suspended the use of AZ either totally (temporarily) or in certain risk groups because of the concern around blood clots.

If you are dithering about whether or not to get vaccinated, or even hoping for a specific vaccine type, there’s no way the news could have a positive effect on your decision - particularly if you’d just reconciled your fears. The government needs to continue to find ways to reassure those people that the vaccine is safe.

People, I’m afraid, don’t tend to look at the relative risk - they look at the worst case scenario.

Ah come on, be serious.

This is not a political decision and the latest concerns started in the Nordics - and Norway is not part of the EU.

I’d subscribe it to an excess of caution, which is good, were it not for the fact that the media will of course get a massive hard-on and peddle all sort of crap. My Hungarian in-laws, where media is nowadays like The Sun but with the added “everyone-is-out-to-get-Hungary-and-Orbán” and a sprinkle of anti-Semitism, are already freaking out.

excess of caution? Well the UK is doing much better on the COVID front than pretty much all of the EU and this is mainly due to vaccines so slowing vaccines down due to bureaucracy/childish games is not the way forward.

the uk position on blood clots is clear that they don’t see any significant increases on the general population, remember blood clots is an issue for older less healthy people vaccine or not and I am comfortable with them saying this is just a statistical coincidence

My point was simply: the UK exports nothing so far vaccine-wise; if the EU had the same approach (they exported 9. million (!) to us) we would still be vaccinating the 70+s only...

I don't know what date the 9m figure is to, but as of today, the UK has done 25.2 million vaccinations according to the gov website. 9 million from the EU is a *third* of that, and the figure is probably already more than 9m.

the Eu was exporting vaccines to us before the EU themselves had even approved it. Now the UK is in the position of having stricter borders than EU due to EU having much more Covid than UK!

my point is simple really and one of my main mottos of life ‘success breeds jealousy’

It is very likely that UK will have no restrictions at all in summer while EU will still have quite a bit

thats a great point actually I am sure there is a clause in the contract to prevent reputational damage through false allegations but I doubt AZ would want to be seen to slow down the rollout given the implications of being accused of that

You mean that they have fulfilled their contractual obligations? Good to know we have people that know how to read a contract before they sign it.

At the risk of being pessimistic, is it not a problem that new vaccine brands (Moderna, J&J) are coming on stream toward the end of the vaccination programme for first doses? In that we’ll be awash with these brands but with nobody to give them to as everyone will be waiting for a second dose of AZ/Pfizer. Or will we end up giving young people their second dose before older people get their second dose, if young people get a newer brand?

The idea that this is somehow politically driven by the EU is ridiculous and stem from a complete lack of understanding of how the EU works (something that Britain struggled with in its almost 5 decades of membership).

The vaccine procurement has been handled centrally and has unfortunately been a farce, due to being slow off the blocks, trying to lowball on price and a contract which seems to have been low on enforceability. This should cost VdL her job in my opinion.

However the recent decisions to suspend AZ use have been taken nationally, and led by the Nordic countries, not exactly as renowned for knee-jerk political point scoring as other member states further south.

There is no evidence to link the two issues and bluntly, to say so, you’re accusing independent medical oversight bodies staffed with professional doctors, chemists and pharmacists in multiple jurisdictions of making baseless decisions influenced by poorly negotiated vaccine acquisitions by an entirely different body in a different state?

Pathetic and juvenile.