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Comment by bogomipz | Hacker News Reader

>"The US used the national defense production act to block any export of BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine produced in the US to other countries"

This is false. The DPA was invoked in order to a) block the export of certain raw materials in order to prioritise local production of vaccines and b) to compel drugmaker Merck to help produce its competitor Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine.[1] It does not block the export of vaccines. The White House clarified this last week as well.

[1] https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2021/03/02/biden-administrati...

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However, the US government was able to block export of AstraZeneca, apparently due to having purchased the vaccine:

The U.S. Is Sitting on Tens of Millions of Vaccine Doses the World Needs https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/us/politics/coronavirus-a...

US agrees to share AstraZeneca vaccines with Mexico, Canada https://amp.france24.com/en/americas/20210319-closing-in-on-...

The US government purchased those. They own those doses and so they are not AstraZenca's to sell.

From your own nytimes link:

>"Last May, the Trump administration pledged up to $1.2 billion to AstraZeneca to finance the development and manufacturing of its vaccine, which it developed with the University of Oxford, and to supply the United States with 300 million doses if it proved effective."

AstraZenca is free to export any vaccine beyond their contractual obligation of those doses. Jane Psaki confirmed as much in her WH press conference on Thursday.

The EU paid AstraZeneca to stockpile vaccines as well. AstraZeneca exported those to the UK

And the EU contract with AZ includes the UK as, technically, an EU member state. SO that isn't as straight forward as it seems.

Really? The UK left more than a year ago. There was merely a transition period where they would abide by EU regulation.

Yep, the contract between the EU and AZ explicitly states that the UK shall be treated for most purposes (manufacturing site and so on) as an EU member. The UK is not included in the EU orders so.

Only for one clause of the contract. There's a requirement that all vaccines supplied under the contract are sourced from within the EU, with some provision for AstraZeneca to source from elsewhere under exceptional circumstances, and it says the UK is treated as part of the EU for the purpose of that clause and only that one. The part requiring them to set up an EU supply chain and make a best effort to supply the EU with a certain number of doses on a certain schedule does not include the UK. Like, someone went to actual effort to ensure it didn't apply to that part of the contract (and I wouldn't be surprised if it came from the EU side).

That’s not been demonstrated. It has been claimed that a separate supply chain was initially purchased for the U.K. within the EU. No evidence has been presented that AZ doses from EU supply chain were diverted.

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