A viral tweet claims that the EU has exported 41.6 million vaccines, mostly to the UK, while the US and UK have exported none. A screenshot of the tweet has also been spreading on Facebook.
This 41.6 million figure and the graph in the image come from Bloomberg. The outlet said these figures were correct as of 15 March and come from “an EU document seen by Bloomberg” which was shared with EU ambassadors.
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said on 17 March that over the previous six weeks, 41 million doses had been exported to 33 countries.
This is how many vaccines have been exported from vaccine manufacturers in EU states, rather than by the EU as an organisation.
By comparison, it’s unclear how many Covid-19 vaccines have been exported from the UK to other countries.
Of the vaccines approved for use in the UK, only the AstraZeneca vaccine is made here. The UK government and AstraZeneca have repeatedly declined to say how many Covid-19 vaccines the UK has exported, but it’s likely zero. Some ingredients for the Pfizer vaccine are reportedly exported from the UK to Pfizer factories in EU member states.
As for the US, the White House said on 18 March that although not yet finalised, it was planning to send four million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Mexico and Canada.
Vaccine nationalism?
The reason why so many more vaccines have left EU member states than the UK has been the source of much contention.
European Council President, Charles Michel, claimed that the United Kingdom and the United States had imposed an “outright ban on the export of vaccines or vaccine components produced on their territory.”
Responding to Mr Michel’s comments, Boris Johnson told the Commons the next day: “I…wish to correct the suggestion from the European Council President that the UK has blocked vaccine exports. Let me be clear: we have not blocked the export of a single covid-19 vaccine or vaccine components.”
He also mentioned that the UK had pledged £548 million to COVAX, a global initiative to get Covid-19 vaccines to poorer countries.
On the same day, President Michel told POLITICO: “They said that they didn’t decide a ban in the U.K. We know, and I know because I am a politician, that there are different ways to impose a ban or to impose restrictions on vaccines and/or on medicines, because on medicines there is a clear ban.
“But the question is the following: how many doses did they export? This is a very simple question, and since yesterday I haven’t heard the answer to this very simple question.”
There is a list of medicinal products related to the treatment of Covid-19 which the UK government has banned from export. This list does not include any Covid-19 vaccines and as we’ve said the government has denied any such ban.
But it does also seem to be the case that no vaccines manufactured in the UK have been exported. This seems to be for a number of reasons, but namely because of the specifics of the contracts it signed with producers and also reportedly, how quickly the UK began negotiating with firms like AstraZeneca for vaccine fulfillment.
As for the EU, it has once acted to block Covid-19 vaccine exports.
From 30 January, the EU introduced a rule meaning vaccine manufacturers who have agreed to deliver a certain number of vaccines to EU countries have to get any other proposed exports (going outside of the EU) authorised.
On 17 March, Mrs von der Leyen said 314 requests for export had been requested and only one had been refused. Italy used these guidelines when it blocked a shipment of 250,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Australia.
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