UK and US officials spar over 'vaccine nationalism'
Covid-19 vaccine
LONDON — British and U.S. officials sparred Thursday over how Britain had beaten the United States to authorizing a coronavirus vaccine.
In Britain, the euphoria of winning the global race to authorizing the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was giving way to a realization of the choices facing the country’s National Health Service as it tries to deliver the first doses by Monday.
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The question of whether Britain had authorized a vaccine in haste on Wednesday, or the United States was wasting valuable time as the virus was killing about 1,500 Americans a day, has divided scientists and has also drawn in politicians. British officials boasted of the decision on Thursday.
Those remarks provoked concerns that any chest-beating by government ministers risked undermining the public’s faith in a vaccine.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that British regulators had not scrutinized data from clinical trials as carefully as their American counterparts in the Food and Drug Administration.
Approval could come as early as next week from the FDA, and at the end of the month from European Union regulators.
Roughly 800,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, developed with BioNTech, a German company, were being packaged at the company’s Belgian manufacturing plant this week for shipment to Britain. How and when they will arrive was being kept secret for security reasons, the company said, though the BBC reported Thursday that some of the doses were being transported through the Eurotunnel between France and Britain.
Pfizer sought to shut down questions this week about whether people in Britain would be able to pay to cut the line for inoculation.
“I can say clearly and confidently that there are no plans to supply the private sector for the foreseeable future — no chance at all,” Ben Osborn, Pfizer’s Britain country manager, said Wednesday, adding that the National Health Service would decide whom to vaccinate.
By Thursday, there were indications that before health workers were vaccinated, the government wanted to offer shots to nursing home workers and people age 80 and over who were already coming to hospitals for other reasons. It appeared likely that doctors and nurses would be among those receiving vaccines in the coming weeks.