EU denies blocking vaccine shipments to Australia

 

An Australian government source told the Reuters agency on Tuesday that the European Union had blocked the export of the 3.1m AstraZeneca doses and that Australia had little hope of getting the remaining 400,000 doses it has been promised on time.

“They’ve blocked 3.1m shots so far … we haven’t given up hope but we’ve stopped counting them in our expected supplies,” the source said.

The European Union has denied blocking shipments of 3.1m doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine from going to Australia, contradicting Scott Morrison’s claim that international supply issues were to blame for missing rollout targets.

At a press conference on Tuesday after after New Zealand announced a trans-Tasman travel bubble, the prime minister said Australia had not received 3.1m AstraZeneca doses from overseas. He said that was to blame for the massive discrepancy between the 855,000 vaccinations administered so far and the missed target of 4m doses by the end of March.

But a European Commission spokesperson said the only export request rejected out of nearly 500 received has been so far a shipment of 250,000 doses to Australia in March, which is well known.

“We cannot confirm any new decision to block vaccine exports to Australia or to any other country,” the spokesperson told a news conference in Europe on Tuesday.

The Nationals deputy leader, David Littleproud, said on Monday that Australia had been “badly let down” by the EU. “The arithmetic is simple on this,” he told the Nine Network. “We are 3m [doses] short because of the EU who cut us short.”

Source:  Guardian Australia