UK Vaccine Order Book Largest of Any Major Country

The UK finalised an agreement for five million doses of the Moderna vaccine yesterday afternoon, which are expected to arrive in the Spring – the same timetable other countries are facing. Despite some odd newspaper headlines this morning, earlier the same day EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides had clearly said “negotiations with the company are ongoing. We have not yet concluded or signed a contract”. Far from the UK at the “back of the queue” claims of the Metro and the Guardian…

While it is true preliminary agreement had been reached between Moderna and the EU in August, this deal has not been concluded – no price has been agreed nor have any vaccines been bought. Last night Labour MP Bill Esterson awkwardly deleted a tweet claiming the UK would have received Moderna earlier if it had joined the EU vaccine scheme. Sheepishly not explaining his deleting after Guido pointed out the obvious…

BEIS has today released a statement, confirming that:

“the UK is one of the first countries in Europe to sign a deal with Moderna. Furthermore, the UK was also the first country in the world to sign a binding agreement for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in July 2020.

The EU are yet to formally sign a deal with either developer. If we had joined the EU vaccine programme, the UK would not have secured doses from either Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna at this stage.”

From ridiculous and unscientific curfew imposition to quarantine rules for those who repeatedly test negative, there are plenty of areas criticise this Government over this pandemic. To Guido it doesn’t look like vaccine procurement is among them.

The UK has ordered vaccines from seven different suppliers, accounting for 355 million doses, almost six per person…

Graph hat-tip: FT

* This article was originally published by Guido Fawkes