Blimey in France I’m hearing 41k news cases and nearly 900 deaths in last 24hrs. If correct that’s not good. When is this bloody thing going to F off?
Can you imagine if this happened here? He will be held responsible for many unnecessary deaths due to his stupidity.idiot.
Coronavirus: France accuses UK of 'blackmail' over vaccine exports Published 1 hour ago Share Related Topics Coronavirus pandemic please log in to view this image IMAGE COPYRIGHTREUTERS image captionFrance's vaccine rollout - along with the rest of the EU - is lagging behind the UK's France has accused the UK of "blackmail" over its handling of coronavirus vaccine exports, amid continuing tensions over supply chains. Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian was asked whether the EU had been "scammed" by sending millions of doses to the UK while its own rollout stuttered. "We need to build a co-operative relationship," he told France Info radio. "But we cannot deal this way." France has called for the EU to implement tougher export controls. ADVERTISEMENT Vaccine rollouts have started sluggishly across the bloc, and the EU has blamed pharmaceutical companies - primarily AstraZeneca - for not delivering its promised doses. AstraZeneca has denied that it is failing to honour its contract. The EU is expecting to receive about 30 million AstraZeneca doses by the end of March, less than a third of what it was hoping for. The UK's vaccination drive, meanwhile, has so far been more successful than that of the EU's 27 member states. Why is the EU having vaccine problems? Where is the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine made? EU tussle with UK over AstraZeneca jabs escalates On Thursday, following a virtual summit where EU leaders discussed vaccine supplies, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc was the "region that exports most vaccines worldwide" and invited other countries to "match our openness". She also said AstraZeneca must "catch up" on its deliveries to the EU before exporting doses elsewhere. please log in to view this image please log in to view this image What has France said? On Friday, Mr Le Drian said the EU "shouldn't be paying the price" for the UK's vaccination policy. He also criticised its approach to purchasing jabs, suggesting the UK was under pressure because it lacked enough doses to supply second shots. "The United Kingdom has taken great pride in vaccinating well with the first dose except they have a problem with the second dose," he said. "One can't play with blackmail," he added. "You can't be playing like this." The foreign minister did not specify what he considered to be blackmail, but earlier this week UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned that strict EU export controls could negatively hit investment in member states. "I would just gently point out to anybody considering a blockade... that companies may look at such actions and draw conclusions about whether or not it is sensible to make future investments," he said. please log in to view this image IMAGE COPYRIGHTREUTERS image captionFrench Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian also said a UK-EU vaccine war would be "astonishing" Mr Le Drian is not the only senior French figure to have called for tighter controls on doses sent from the EU. President Emmanuel Macron told reporters on Thursday that the virtual summit marked "the end of naivety" from the bloc. "I support the fact that we must block all exports for as long as some drug companies don't respect their commitments," he said. EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, meanwhile, singled out AstraZeneca for criticism. "AstraZeneca has been an issue," he said. "I just remind you that we were expecting to have 120 million doses... and finally we got 30 million. So we had a problem with this company." What happened at the EU summit? On Thursday, following hours of talks, EU leaders gave their backing in principle to toughening vaccine export controls. But they stopped short of a banning exports altogether, and a a post-summit statement emphasised the importance of maintaining the global supply chains needed to produce vaccines. President Ursula von der Leyen, however, voiced frustration at AstraZeneca and threatened to block exports from the UK-Swedish company until it delivered its promised doses to the EU. "The company has to catch up, [it] has to honour the contract it has with European member states, before it can engage again in exporting vaccines," she said. Elements of the AstraZeneca vaccination are manufactured in a number of EU states. media captionOne Austrian MEP tells the BBC that export bans should be considered Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said while his fellow leaders had found the Commission's tougher export measures "acceptable", he hoped they would never be used - a message echoed by his Belgian counterpart, Alexander De Croo. Member states also agreed to try and ramp up the production of vaccines within the bloc. They called on manufacturers to "ensure predictability of their vaccine production and respect contractual delivery deadlines". How bad is coronavirus in Europe? A third wave of infections is sweeping across much of mainland Europe. EU states have seen some of the deadliest outbreaks of the pandemic, with Italy recording more than 106,000 deaths, France 93,000, Germany 75,000 and Spain 73,000. Yet recent figures show just 12.9 doses of vaccine have been administered per 100 people in the EU compared with 44.7 in the UK and 37.2 in the US. please log in to view this image please log in to view this image France's Health Minister Olivier Véran said 400,000 people had been vaccinated on Friday, which is just under the UK's daily average. The country is hoping to step-up its vaccination programme in the coming weeks. Also on Friday, Europe's medicines regulator approved three factories for the production of coronavirus vaccines. A site in the Netherlands was cleared to produce the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab, while a German factory was given the go-ahead to make Pfizer/BioNTech doses. A manufacturing site for the Moderna jab in Switzerland was also approved. Speaking earlier this week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the British variant had become the dominant strain circulating in Germany and amounted to "a new pandemic". "The situation is serious," she said. "Case numbers are rising exponentially and intensive care beds are filling up again." Lockdowns have been re-imposed or extended in countries like Belgium or the Netherlands but there is particular concern over eastern EU states. Poland will close nurseries, pre-schools and hairdressers for two weeks from Saturday after coronavirus cases surged.
Well you have been very vocal regarding the amount of deaths in the U.K. and blaming the government, I remember saying to you that it’s wasn't over yet. I believe when this is all done there will be many countries that will look back and say they could have done things differently. It’s a pandemic and a lot of bad stuff happens.
If every person in the world outside this country died it wouldn’t mean Johnson has been anything but negligent and corrupt apart from in the eyes of the Tory cucks intent on defecting blame from him and his government.
You really don’t have a Scooby do you? Mistakes were made but not to the extent Tory haters like you claim. Fortunately this country has many level headed and realistic people who understand that we are in a pandemic and sadly people will die. You carry on moaning about everything. TBH it doesn’t matter what they do you will moan because that’s what you do.
He wanted to let **** knows how many people die so we could get a run on other economies. Your willingness to kneel down and swallow what they give you is utterly tragic.
I think you will find there is a difference Bob. For all the mistakes Boris has made he never came out with unfounded remarks about the vaccine. What Macron has done is almost self harm on the people of France. Remember he made unfounded comments about AZ then retracted on them a few days later as if it meant nothing. He has/will cause unnecessary deaths in a country that is sceptical about vaccines.
While I’ve made it pretty clear that I am not a fan of AZ, even I have to feel a little sorry for them. The only company to commit to an ‘at cost’ vaccine approach, where they have foregone perhaps $20bn of revenue (Pfizer forecasting increased earnings of $15bn, Moderna of $18bn, both on smaller volumes than AZ) they should have been the Global heroes with their promise of 3 billion doses, many for poorer countries. But they are attacked from all sides, partly because of their own cock ups on trial design and communications, partly because they over promised and entered contracts with customers who did not understand what they were signing, and partly because they have become the ball in a game of political football. Boris Johnson, the worst advertisement for capitalism going, a man who cannot manage his own finances, told his cronies that ‘greed’ had driven the vaccine development. Not in AZ’s case matey, at least in the short term (they might have believed that good PR would bring them commercial benefits in the longer term. Dream on). However, Johnson’s analysis is correct in one sense. AZ’s shareholders have punished it by wiping $27bn off its market value. Pfizer have already tried to buy it once, Soriot said no, perhaps they are still hungry with their extra cash.....
Welldone Gibraltar, everybody vaccinated, NO new cases for two days, masks to go next week, bars open until 2am. Something’s working ! please log in to view this image 7
Ellers... I am sorry but Boris has caused a lot, alot, ALOT of self harm to our population. Not/ never really closing our borders Attempting herd immunity. Not closing down soon enough, slow to lockdown. Eat out to help out. Letting Christmas start to happen before closing it down. Sending schools back for a day. The trace and Track world class system. To name but a few little of his little self harm activities..all of which contributed to 125,000 deaths. I will not forget, even if you do Macron is a complete idiot... agreed. But France does not have a monopoly
Sorry Beth but you have made your feelings clear in the past regarding Boris and the government. As for the 'eat out'. our local pub/restaurant manager has said he didn't have any cases recorded. Eating establishments did a fab job of protecting people. so I think you are wrong there. You need to accept that many people abused the lockdown rules and restrictions. More importantly the government didn't make people obese or give them underlining conditions or make them old. I think that was about 98% of deaths according to the BBC. Agree they could have locked down earlier, borders should have been shut and T&T was a bit of a disaster. However we have saved lives with our fantastic roll out and now are doing well compared to other parts of Europe. I know it will grind with some and thank god we didn't get mixed up with that EU vaccine program as we would be in a worse position. Saying all this... we were discussing Macron and his idiotic AZ comments. Boris may have made mistakes but he hasn't caused unnecessary rubbish with the AZ vaccine comments.
As always we will beg to differ. Especially on the "eat out to help out" ...which aided the mentality of freedom over the summer ( lucky your local had no cases, but who would know with T&T,being so crap)...and crass remarks about the success of the vaccine program was down to greed and capitalism. I am already getting a bit tired of our triumphalism ....as much as I am getting tired of "it's so unfair" from EU ...but mainly France and Germany. People have and are still dying in huge numbers..We should all be in this together. This is not a time to see who can p*** the furthest.
