Opinion: ‘10 million reasons to be proud’

By the time you read this column, the UK is likely to have vaccinated over 10 million people. A jab has already been offered to every elderly resident in eligible care homes in England.

We are on course to hit the mid-February target for the most vulnerable groups. That matters because it should significantly reduce deaths.

Our age is the biggest single factor in our vulnerability. With each 20-year increase in age, the risk of dying from Coronavirus increases around ten times.

Age is more significant than underlying conditions like cardiovascular disease or diabetes. It’s a much larger factor than being male or being in BAME groups.

That’s why is such good news that nearly everyone aged 80 or over has now been reached for their first jab. And that’s why the EU’s threat to block the export of their second jabs was so alarming.

We paid for those Pfizer doses and ordered them before the EU. The second dose needs to be given within 12 weeks of the first. Trying to block them was an outrageous manoeuvre.

At one point, the European Commission even announced that it would close the border with Northern Ireland, undermining the Good Friday Agreement.

Adding absurdity to insult and harm, the EU’s dispute wasn’t with Pfizer or the UK. The European Union is upset about its contract with the Swedish division of AstraZeneca. They should be blaming themselves, rather than behaving so outrageously.

Unlike the UK, they failed to insist on binding guarantees, failed to order quickly and put their eggs in too few baskets. In other words, they were bureaucratic and unimaginative, as normal. This was exactly why we went for our own, independent approach.

Labour and the Lib Dem urged us to be part of EU’s vaccine programme last summer. Can you imagine the result? Anyone in doubt just needs to glance across the Channel.

I understand why European governments are furious at the European Commission. Perhaps a few more will now appreciate why we decided to leave the EU.

Our success didn’t happen by accident. The ground work was laid last year, when we ensured clinical trials could start early and invested in research and production facilities.

By moving rapidly and ‘at risk’, our vaccine taskforce secured access to over 400 million doses for the UK. By setting up our own regulator (also opposed by Labour), we were then the first to approve and the first to start vaccinating.

More than a thousand GP serviMoreces and 250 hospital sites are now administering the jabs. In Peterborough, we have our new vaccination centre, working in parallel to our GPs and the City Hospital.

There was nothing stopping the EU from doing the same – except themselves.

Those asking about the benefits of Brexit have their answer. It was always about independence, not a petty version of nationalism, and any vaccine nationalism would be self-defeating.

Obviously, the Government’s duty is to ensure that people in the UK are vaccinated as quickly as possible. At the same time, we are assisting with production around the world.

By over-ordering supplies to cover all eventualities, we will have millions of doses to offer elsewhere. An immediate thought is helping our friends and neighbours in the Irish republic. Another reason for the EU to honour its border obligations.