Last month, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen threatened to stop the export of the Covid-19 vaccine to the United Kingdom unless the country agrees to trade their doses with the EU. According to the reports, countries like Denmark, France, Italy and Germany backed up the EU threat. Despite the serious threats and warnings of the halt, UK persisted in not sharing the Covid-19 vaccines.
AstraZeneca was already facing production issues and therefore only agreed to deliver 100 million doses instead of the previous agreement for the supply of 300 million vaccine doses by the first half of 2021. The main reason for the shortfall of doses was the production inconvenience and export control issues.
Other countries receiving a considerable share of vaccine doses include Canada with a total of 6.6 million doses as of March 24. The number of exports to Canada had doubled from 3.3 million doses to 6.6. million. Japan got 5.4 million doses and on April 5th, the biggest Covid-19 vaccine shipment till now reached the Tokyo airport with around 2 million vaccine doses.
