Boris Johnson reveals schools won’t reopen until at least MARCH 8

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Boris Johnson today declared that schools will not reopen until at least March 8 as he extended lockdown by another three weeks, but tried to quell rising Tory anger by pledging a ‘road map’ out of the coronavirus crisis.

The PM delivered the grim news – which means the worst-hit school years in some areas will have had only 73 days of lessons since the pandemic began last March – to millions of children and struggling parents in a statement to the House of Commons this afternoon, saying he knew how ‘frustrated’ they will be.

He made clear there is no hope of any lockdown easing until well after the mid-February review date – finally ruling out the idea that some more pupils could return to classrooms after half-term. Currently only the offspring of key workers are in schools, with everyone else remote learning.

Mr Johnson said fast progress was being made on vaccinations with doses given to more than 6.8million people – 13 per cent of the adult population – and the NHS is on track to hit the goal of covering the four most vulnerable groups by February 15. The jabs should give them full protection three weeks after that, he insisted. 

‘We hope it will therefore be safe to begin the reopening of schools from Monday 8 March,’ the premier said – while warning that even that is contingent on pressure on the health service easing. 

However, fronting a Downing Street press conference later this afternoon, Mr Johnson  warned parents March 8 was the ‘earliest’ date that was ‘sensible’ and safe for children to go back, adding: ‘It depends on lots of things going right.’ 

Mr Johnson has earlier rejected calls from Sir Keir Starmer to allow teachers to jump the vaccine queue as he told the Labour leader to ‘explain which vaccines he would take from which vulnerable groups to make sense of his policy’.

Meanwhile, teaching unions warned that coming out of the third national lockdown ‘too early’ could ultimately lead to a fourth national squeeze. 

The PM’s announcement means some children in non-exam years at state secondary schools – years seven, eight and nine – will have missed around 111 days of the 184 they should have received since the first lockdown came in, depending on holiday length at their individual school. 

Primary pupils and years 10 and 12, which went back early in the hope of salvaging exams, and the children of key workers, will have had more.

The announcement came after the UK’s death toll hit the grim milestone of 100,000, with scientists claiming the victims could have been reduced by tougher Government action.

In the Commons, Mr Johnson admitted that ‘perpetual lockdown is no answer’. But he also confirmed that borders are being tightened, with enforced 10-day stays in ‘quarantine hotels’ for arrivals from countries on a ‘red list’ with high infection rates. 

‘We will not persist for a day longer than necessary, but nor will we relax too soon,’ he said. ‘Reopening schools will be our first priority.’ 

Pleading for the public to stick with his strategy, Mr Johnson said: ‘Our goal now must be to buy the extra weeks we need to immunise the most vulnerable and get this virus under control, so that together we can defeat this most wretched disease, reclaim our lives once and for all.’ 

Mr Johnson has already said that he hopes to reopen schools and return to the ‘tiered’ restrictions when possible. News that work on the exit strategy is under way came after Prof Chris Whitty said he believed the UK had reached the peak of the latest wave of infections. 

The chief medic said cases were falling fast – down from 68,000 cases recorded on January 7 to just over 20,000 yesterday, while the vaccine rollout is gathering speed. 

However, deaths are still high as they lag behind infections – with some scientists suggesting another 50,000 could fall victim before the crisis ‘burns out’. 

Professor Neil Ferguson told the BBC that if action had been taken ‘earlier and with greater stringency back in September’ then the 60,000 deaths over the past ‘four or five months’ could have been significantly reduced.

Tory MPs today urged the PM to focus on whether the NHS can cope, rather than the grim death total or high infection levels, when deciding what areas of lockdown can be eased. 

Senior backbenchers pointed to the wider balance of ‘lives saved now versus lives saved later’, pointing out that ‘poverty kills’ as well as the virus.  

On another brutal day in the worst crisis for a generation: 

• The EU indicated it could move to restrict export of jabs and launched a bid to have British supplies diverted to Europe; 
• Tensions between AstraZeneca and the EU over stocks of jabs have ramped up with a meeting being cancelled, after it emerged the bloc signed contracts three months later than the UK;
• Ministers are unveiling details of enforced ‘quarantine hotels’ for travellers from Covid hotspots, amid claims Priti Patel wanted a tougher border shutdown;
• Nicola Sturgeon has called for a ‘comprehensive system of supervised quarantine’ for travellers arriving in the UK and said that the government’s plan ‘does not go far enough’; 
• Ms Sturgeon also questioned whether the PM’s planned trip to Scotland this week is ‘essential’ as she said he has a ‘duty to lead by example’ and stick to the rules; 
• Mr Johnson has condemned a Labour call for all teachers to be vaccinated over half-term and other key workers to be pushed up the priority list; 
• Figures showed more than 30,000 care home residents in England and Wales have had Covid put on their death certificate.

Mr Johnson’s schools announcement was accompanied with a pledge to increase the amount of money available to pay for ‘catch-up’ initiatives for pupils in the next financial year. 

The PM said a further £300million will be made available to schools for tutoring while arrangements for providing free school meals to eligible pupils will be extended to cover the period until they are back in the classroom. 

Mr Johnson said he recognised that extended school closures ‘have had a huge impact on children’s learning which will take more than a year to make up’.

He promised to ‘work with parents, teachers and schools to develop a long-term plan to make sure pupils have the chance to make up their learning over the course of this parliament’.

Robert Halfon, the Tory chairman of the Education Select Committee, welcomed the new funding as he urged the PM to reopen schools as soon as possible. 

Mr Halfon said: ‘I know he wants schools and colleges to open sooner rather than later and I really welcome what he has said today about catch up, the extra funding, free school meals and above all the education plan for a Covid recovery.

‘Will he ensure the catch up fund also helps children with mental health problems and will he work with the coalition of the willing such as the children’s commissioner and other educationalists to get all our children back in the classroom?’

Mr Johnson replied that the Government is ‘putting extra funding into mental health problems particularly for children and young people’. 

Conservative MP Joy Morrissey urged Mr Johnson to have the ‘courage’ to bring children back to school as quickly as possible, warning a ‘lifetime of problems’ are being stored up for the youngest.

The MP for Beaconsfield told the Commons: ‘As a mother of a nine-year-old, I can see that young children are struggling and their cognitive development is determined at this age.

‘We’re storing up a lifetime of problems of anxiety, mental health, obesity by having all of our young primary aged children at home.

‘Please may I urge the Prime Minister to have courage in these final months to bring children, particularly primary aged children, back to school as quickly as possible.’

Mr Johnson said: ‘You are completely right and I know you speak for millions of mothers and millions of parents across the country who want our kids to be back in school, and anxious about the gaps in their learning that may be arising as a result of this pandemic.’

The Prime Minister said the Government will do ‘everything we can’ to fill the gaps.

Teaching unions responded to the announcement by warning that ‘arbitrary dates’ for schools to reopen can be unhelpful to parents and teachers. 

Dr Patrick Roach, general secretary of the NASUWT teachers’ union, said: ‘Given previous experience, the announcement of arbitrary dates for schools to reopen to all pupils can be profoundly unhelpful to parents and to those working in schools.

‘However, a clear plan for how schools will be fully reopened whenever the lockdown restrictions are lifted remains a key question which the Government must now work urgently and openly with the profession to address.’

Union bosses also warned Mr Johnson against reopening schools too early. 

Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said: ‘If we come out too early, we will end up in lockdown again.’  

Earlier, the PM promised a lockdown exit plan is coming as he was challenged by Keir Starmer in the Commons about whether his ‘slow’ action had contributed to the UK’s 100,000 death toll. 

But while he stressed he grieved with the families and regretted all loss of life, Mr Johnson shot back that there were ‘no easy answers’ to a problem as large as the pandemic.    

The clashes at PMQs were bruising even though Sir Keir is self-isolating after being notified he has come into contacted with an infected individual. 

Sir Keir said: ‘I am sure the Prime Minister regrets the fact that 100,000 people have lost their lives. The question is why?

‘Why has the United Kingdom the highest number of deaths in Europe, why has the United Kingdom a death rate that is higher than almost anywhere in the world?’

The Prime Minister replied: ‘When you have a new virus and indeed when you have a new variant of that virus of the kind that we have in this country, when you have the dilemmas as hard and as heavy as this Government has had to face over the last year, I must tell (Sir Keir) there are no easy answers – perpetual lockdown is no answer.’

Mr Johnson told MPs that ‘6.9million people in our country have had the vaccine’, including more than 80 per cent of over-80s.

He added: ‘I hope very much to be, in the next few weeks, to be setting out in much more detail how this country can exit now from the pandemic.’

Accusing the Labour leader of ‘political point scoring’ during the crisis, Mr Johnson said: ‘Like (Sir Keir), I mourn every death in this pandemic and we share the grief of all those who have been bereaved. 

‘And let him be in no doubt and let the House be in no doubt that I and the Government take full responsibility for all the actions that I have taken and that we have taken during this pandemic to fight this disease.’

Mr Johnson said that ‘yes there will indeed be a time when we must learn the lessons of what has happened’, but added: ‘I don’t think that moment is now when we are in the throes of fighting this wave of the new variant, when 37,000 people are struggling with Covid in our hospitals.’

Despite the tentative signs the outbreak is improving, scientists have warned that the victims are likely to keep racking up.

Professor Calum Semple, a member of SAGE, said Britons should be braced for more grim numbers for months to come. ‘It would really not surprise me if we’re looking at another 40,000 or 50,000 deaths before this burns out. The deaths on the way up are likely to be mirrored by the deaths on the way down,’ he told BBC Newsnight. 

Prof Ferguson – known as Professor Lockdown – made clear his frustration at the speed of response from the government, suggesting deaths in the first wave could have been ‘drastically reduced by earlier action’.

On the second wave, he told the BBC last night: ‘Had we acted both earlier and with greater stringency back in September when we first saw case numbers going up, and had a policy of keeping case numbers at a reasonably low level, then I think a lot of the deaths that we’ve seen — not all by any means — but a lot of the deaths that we’ve seen in the last four or five months, could have been avoided.’ 

This morning Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick defended the handling of the pandemic amid criticism that Mr Johnson acted too late to lockdown at crucial moments, stressing that there was no ‘textbook’ to dealing with the disease and ministers did ‘everything we could’ based on the knowledge they had.

But, in a round of interviews, he admitted that in ‘hindsight’ there were things that could have been done differently, and accepted there will ‘come a time’ when the government’s performance will need to be assessed.

As he was battered with questions about why the UK had been hit harder than many other countries, Mr Jenrick told Sky News: ‘We took the decisions that we could at the time on the basis of the information that was available to us.

‘And we did everything that we could to protect people’s lives and help to weather the storm, and take the country through this very challenging period.

‘There is no textbook as to how to respond to a pandemic like this, but we do believe that we took the right decisions at the right time.

‘And now our focus is on continuing to help the country through the remaining stages of the pandemic and focus on the vaccine rollout.’ 

But in a blunt verdict, shadow health secretary said: ‘I don’t accept they did everything they could.’ 

Although he sounded a more optimistic tone last night, Prof Whitty urged the British public not to ease-up and begin relaxing now. He warned that case numbers, particularly those in hospital, as well as Covid death figures, remained high.

The Prime Minister meanwhile said the country would have time to ‘learn lessons, reflect and repair’ at the end of the crisis, which was now in sight thanks to the roll-out of vaccines.

And he said the nation would then come together ‘to remember everyone we lost, and to honour the selfless heroism of all those on the front line who gave their lives to save others’.

Mr Johnson added: ‘On this day I should just really repeat that I am deeply sorry for every life that has been lost and, of course, as I was Prime Minister I take full responsibility for everything that the Government has done.

‘What I can tell you is that we truly did everything we could, and continue to do everything that we can, to minimise loss of life and to minimise suffering in what has been a very, very difficult stage, and a very, very difficult crisis for our country. 

‘And we will continue to do that, just as every government that is affected by this crisis around the world is continuing to do the same.’

He added: ‘I offer my deepest condolences to everyone who has lost a loved one: fathers and mothers; brothers and sisters; sons and daughters and the many grandparents who have been taken.’

The 100,000 death toll is five times the 20,000 once described as a ‘good outcome’ by the Government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance.

The UK is only the fifth country to lose so many lives, after the much larger United States, Brazil, India and Mexico.   

Tory MP Sir Desmond Swayne told MailOnline: ‘My concern is the lack of a real sense of urgency about the need to lift restrictions, and mission creep beyond what was the key issue: avoiding the NHS being overwhelmed.

‘The focus must be on the the point at which vaccination of people that, had they been infected, would have been admitted to hospital has proceeded sufficiently to reduce the risk to the NHS

‘The danger is that we are focussing on the number of deaths and the total level of infections

‘To achieve the original mission we need only concern ourselves with infection that is likely to lead to admission.’

The Archbishop of Canterbury said he prays for Mr Johnson and any ‘regrets’ he has about the Government’s response to the pandemic.

He told BBC Breakfast: ‘I pray for our politicians each day, our political leaders, including the Prime Minister, because they’re human, they’re deeply, deeply human.

‘There will be things they’ve got wrong, because they’re human.

‘Today is a day for solidarity and support, there will be inquiries in the future, that is quite right, but today is for solidarity.

‘They will have regrets. I’d say to all of them, take it to God in prayer, confess it, and we have to move on and get the next decision right, and care for people better as a result.’

Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer described the current death toll as a ‘national tragedy’ and accused Mr Johnson of being ‘behind the curve at every stage’ when responding to the pandemic, particularly on testing, PPE and imposing lockdowns.

Another 1,631 deaths were recorded within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test yesterday, taking the total to 100,162.

Tory MPs also admitted that mistakes had been made. Defence Committee chair Tobias Ellwood was asked on the BBC last night whether the infection rate was fuelld by locking down too late in March, the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, the Christmas relaxation of restrictions and not closing airports.

‘Looking back, you have to say yes to all of that,’ he replied.

‘These are the very tough decisions that not just this Government but every government is making in trying to balance tackling Covid-19 while keeping the economy open.’

Professor Whitty warned that deaths were likely to remain high for the next few weeks, before the effects of the vaccine were felt.

He said positive tests were falling but remained very high. 

He added: ‘We need to be careful that we do not relax too early. The number of people in hospital with Covid is still an incredibly high number – over 35,000.’

The professor said hospital cases were decreasing in areas including London and the South East but not in some other regions.

And though he said death figures had ‘flattened’, he said they still remained ‘very high’. He warned the death  figures were likely to come down meaning there would ‘unfortunately’ still be ‘quite a lot more deaths of the next few weeks’.

His comments match those of Adam Kucharski, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who also warned that tens of thousands of people in the UK were likely to die in the coming month.

In a grim prediction, he told the BBC’s World at One that about 30,000 more deaths were likely within the next month ‘from infections that have already happened’.

Critics have blamed failures to close the borders, an ineffective test and trace system as well as entering lockdowns too late for allowing the virus to become endemic.

An ageing population and a well-documented obesity crisis are also thought to have left Britain susceptible to the virus.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said each death was ‘heartbreaking’ but jabs ‘offer the way out’.   

The figures came as the former CPS chief prosecutor of the north west who brought down a Rochdale child abuse gang has suggested Boris Johnson could face prosecution for misconduct in public office over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr Johnson, in his Downing Street address this evening expressed his regret that more than 100,000 had died of Covid-19.

Nazir Afzal, the former CPS chief prosecutor in the north west said he believes the PM could face prosecution.

‘We cannot wait 10yrs for public inquiry.

‘I have instructed my lawyers to consider whether anything he did or didn’t do amounts to gross negligence or misconduct in public office and what consequences should follow.’

He wrote: ‘100,000 Covid dead and Boris Johnson has still not met with the family of any of bereaved, he hasn’t called for a day of remembrance or even a moment’s silence.

‘We don’t matter. Invitations remain unanswered. We will support each other and give the dead a voice.’

Mr Afzal’s brother Umar died in April 2020 of Covid-19.

He continued on Twitter: ‘Prime Minister says hundreds of NHS staff ‘gave their lives’.

‘No, their lives were TAKEN. We didn’t prepare. We put them in the line of fire without protection.

‘They courageously stepped in but YOU let them down.’

As Britain reached its grim 100,000 death total, it was reported yesterday that a staggering 100 million people around the world have been infected with coronavirus, a grim Johns Hopkins University tally shows.

The virus that didn’t exist two years ago spread to just shy of 13 percent of the global population in just over a year.

COVID-19 has claimed the lives of 2.1 million people, leaving economies in shreds and hardly a family untouched.

Since the virus emerged in Wuhan and turned the bustling metropolis to a ghost town, COVID-19’s place or origin has managed the unthinkable: it is nearly back to normal.

But most of the world is a long way from ‘normal.’

The US has more than a quarter of the world’s cases and more than 3,000 Americans die of COVID-19.

UK residents remain under the strictest set of lockdows the nation has seen yet and is still seeing the second highest number of new daily infections per one million people in the world.

Vaccines, the proverbial ‘light at the end of the pandemic’s tunnel, have arrived, but the rollout is agonizingly slow with less than 0.9 percent of the population having had a shot.

And super-infectious variants that have emerged in the UK, US, Brazil and South Africa amid surging case threaten to further overwhelm already cracked health systems, evade vaccines and undercut the hard-won progress the world has finally made against the pandemic.

It has been just over a year after China first alerted the World Health Organization (WHO) that the mysterious wave of pneumonia cases in Wuhan – the largest city in the Hubei province – appeared to be caused by a new virus.

Scientists now think the virus was probably there months earlier. The Chinese government likely downplayed or altogether hid the earliest warning signs that a pandemic was brewing.

But even with an unprecedented flurry of scientific activity and international collaboration, things are, in some ways, worse than ever.

Monday alone, half a million new COVID-19 cases were recorded around the globe, according to Johns Hopkins University.

That’s down considerably from the nearly 858,000 global cases recorded on January 7, but is nearly double the number of cases being recorded across the world in the summer.

And it’s not just the seasonality of the virus, or that it’s spreading more but is not still a lethal threat. On Tuesday alone, 10,676 people died of COVID-19.

Again, daily fatalities have declined over the past week, from nearly 18,000 on January 20, but daily deaths have risen higher and stayed higher by far this winter than they’ve been at any previous point in the pandemic.

EU at war with AstraZeneca: Brussels demands Covid jabs made in Britain are sent to EUROPE as furious MEPs call for company’s vaccine contract to be made public

EU officials have brazenly demanded that UK-made Covid vaccines be exported to Europe to make up for shortfalls in their roll-out – just a day after Ursula Von Der Leyen threatened to stop doses made on the continent from coming the other way.

In a stunning piece of hypocrisy, EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said that AstraZeneca vaccines made in Britain should be used to make up for a 60 per cent reduction in jabs to the continent that the company said was due to low production at a factory in Belgium.

‘UK factories are part of our advanced purchase agreement and that is why they have to deliver,’ Kyriakides said, noting that two of the four factories involved in the EU’s contract with AstraZeneca are in Britain. 

‘I call on AstraZeneca to engage fully to rebuild trust, to provide complete information and to live up to its contractual, societal and moral obligations,’ she added at a media briefing in Brussels.  

The bloc is currently engaged in a war-of-words with AstraZeneca in a desperate bid to pin blame for its painfully-slow jabs roll-out on the drug-maker, despite boss Pascal Soriot explaining that the hold-up is due to the fact that the EU ordered its jabs three months later than the UK, meaning supply chains are not running at full capacity.

But Eurocrats flatly rejected that line of argument today, telling German media: ‘We reject… the idea that manufacturing facilities in the UK are reserved for deliveries to the UK. 

‘If there is a problem in one plant in Belgium, we have capacity in other plants in Europe and the UK.’ 

In a sign of deepening tensions, EU officials also accused AstraZeneca of cancelling a meeting to discuss the crisis last-minute – only for the company to deny the rumours and say it was still going ahead. 

Panic was sparked in Brussels after German media slammed the EU for holding up its vaccine drive with needless bureaucracy, with one newspaper calling it ‘an advert for Brexit’. 

In another stunning development, elected MEPs revealed today that they have not been given a full copy of the AstraZeneca deal which unelected officials signed, meaning they have been unable to properly scrutinize it or hold those responsible for it to account. 

‘So far we have seen redacted designs. I don’t think it can do (…) that we basically get no information at all,’ Parliament Vice-President Nicola Beer said, adding that missing information includes the price of the drug, the date of delivery, and the number of doses ordered.

In an attempt to calm tensions, Soriot said that vaccines meant for the EU were produced in four plants in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy – one of which had experienced technical problems which meant it was able to produce fewer doses of vaccine than anticipated. 

But EU Commission officials said on Wednesday that under the contract, the company had also committed to providing vaccines from two factories in Britain.

They added the firm had not provided sufficient explanations on why doses could not be shipped from stocks at factories which experienced no production problem, like the UK’s.

The EU has not yet approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for use, though its medical regulator is expected to give the go-ahead on Friday – with ministers anticipating an initial delivery of some 80million doses which has now been cut to 31million.

That means the already-struggling EU vaccine programme will be hit by further delays. Spain has warned that it will run out of jabs in the badly-hit Catalonia region by the end of the week – a gap that could have been filled using the AstraZeneca jabs. 

Pressure on the EU over the vaccine roll-out also ramped up today after German newspapers rounded on officials, calling the shambles ‘the best advert for Brexit‘ while blaming chief Ursula von der Leyen for the delays. 

The EU is acting ‘slowly, bureaucratically and protectionist… and if something goes wrong, it’s everyone else’s fault’ fumed a front-page editorial in Die Zeit, one of Germany‘s best-respected broadsheets.

Meanwhile Bild tore apart Von Der Leyen’s explanation of the vaccine delays and threat to stop supplies heading to the UK line by line, accusing her of placing ‘junk’ orders for vaccines three months late.

‘She says: ‘We know that there is no time to lose in a pandemic,’ but what she means is: ‘We may have wasted time. But we will NEVER admit that”, the paper said, before adding that ‘Brexit Brits continue to receive full supplies.’

Both reports quoted an employee for AstraZeneca, who said: ‘I understand Brexit a bit better now.’

Meanwhile Brexiteer MPs in the UK seized on the chaos to claim it proves they were right to split from the bloc and calling the delay in EU vaccine orders ‘absurd’.

Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform UK Party, said the vaccines situation proved the EU is a ‘bad project, run by bad people’ and added: ‘Brexit was the right thing to do.’

Tory MP Peter Bone told MailOnline: ‘Do you remember the criticism we faced for not joining the EU vaccination programme?

‘We made the right call as an independent nation and it is clear it was a benefit to us not being tied to the bureaucracy of the EU. 

‘A three month delay is absurd. It is clearly an advantage to not be part of the EU and it is really good for us but sad obviously for the people of the countries of the EU.’

Adding to the criticism over the other side of the Channel, Bild newspaper wrote: ‘Von Der Leyen said: ‘Few suspected [in 2020] that this was the beginning of a pandemic that would still be with us a year later.’ 

‘What she means is: ‘Unfortunately, we are not one of the smart few…’

The paper concludes: ‘[Von Der Leyen] is responsible for EU junk orders. 

‘Also for the fact that the EU only reached an agreement with AstraZeneca in August, not in June – as [German health minister] Jens Spahn wanted but was not allowed to. Valuable preparation time passed.

‘Von der Leyen cannot do anything for the current audacity of AstraZeneca. The criticism is justified. But there must also be self-criticism.’

Meanwhile, Die Zeit added: ‘In the UK, the government’s independent and swift vaccination policy is seen as evidence that the EU is too bureaucratic and slow – and is now left behind.’

Amid the war-of-words, AstraZeneca boss Pascal Soriot, a Frenchman, spoke out to defend himself late Tuesday – also pointing the finger of blame at Brussels.

Asked why supplies were being cut to the EU but not the recently-departed UK, he said it had nothing to do with national favoritism and everything to do with the fact that the EU placed its vaccine order late.

‘We had problems in the UK too,’ he told a trio of European newspapers including Italy’s Repubblica on Tuesday.

‘But the contract with the British government was signed three months before the one with the EU, therefore we had time to prepare and resolve similar issues.

‘The UK and the EU have two different production chains and at the moment the British ones are more efficient because they started earlier.’ 

Britain signed a contract for 300million doses of vaccine in mid-May, he revealed, but it took the EU until August to put pen to paper on the same deal.

Embarrassingly for the bloc, it appears that Germany, the Netherlands, France and Italy had originally been looking to do a deal with AstraZeneca in May alongside the UK – but were blocked by the EU, which insisted it take over negotiations. 

According to ITV’s Robert Peston: ‘The extra talks with the European Commission led to no material changes to the contract, but wasted time on making arrangements to make the vaccine with partner sites.’

The delays in producing the vaccine are now thought to be due to under-production at one of those sites, located in Belgium. 

Explaining the delay in more detail, Soriot said the manufacturing process involves pumping the virus into large vats of live cultures which then generate the vaccine.

Because the process involves living things and many variables, the exact quantity of product is difficult to predict ahead of time – vats in the EU have been less productive while vats in the UK have been more productive, he said.  

‘A very efficient vaccine factory can produce up to three times the same as a less efficient factory… as happened at one of our European sites,’ Soriot added. 

It will take time and some adjustments to get all vats running at the same capacity, which is what is causing the delays to Europe’s vaccine shipment. 

Faced with growing public anger over the failings, Italy has threatened to sue to get its vaccine doses while Von Der Leyen has ordered AstraZeneca to ‘meet your obligations.’

But, according to Soriot, the company is meeting its obligations because it only signed a ‘best effort’ deal with the EU – promising to try and achieve 300million vaccines, but with both sides acknowledging that the process might be hit by delays.

‘We are two months behind schedule,’ Soriot admitted. ‘But we are working to solve these problems.’

As the row intensified, EU officials challenged Soriot to make the full contract they signed public – saying the ‘best effort’ clause that he had disclosed was confidential and taken out of context. 

An official added that the best-effort clause was standard in contracts with manufacturers of products that are in development.

‘Best effort is a completely standard clause when you are signing a contract with a company for a product that does not yet exist,’ the official said. ‘Obviously you cannot put a completely legal obligation’ under these conditions.

The official said that best effort meant that the company had to show an ‘overall’ effort to develop and deliver vaccines.

As the row escalated, EU officials claimed on that AstraZeneca had cancelled a meeting due to take place later on Wednesday to discuss the shortfalls – only for the company to deny the rumour and say the meeting was going ahead as planned. 

AstraZeneca added: ‘Each supply chain was developed with input and investment from specific countries or international organisations based on the supply agreements, including our agreement with the European Commission.

‘As each supply chain has been set up to meet the needs of a specific agreement, the vaccine produced from any supply chain is dedicated to the relevant countries or regions and makes use of local manufacturing wherever possible.’

In his interview, Soriot also put paid to rumours circulated by German ministers – and printed in two newspapers – that his vaccine barely works in old people as ‘nonsense’.

‘I don’t know where that figure comes from. It’s totally wrong,’ he said. ‘Political maneuvers? I don’t know. 

‘Of course, like tests and masks, vaccines have also become a political tool. But bogus reconstructions like these are shameful because they only swell the Anti-Vax movement and confuse people. At the moment we should all be united.’

As a final note, he said the vaccine is being distributed on a not-for-profit basis, meaning any allegations that countries have paid to skip the queue are untrue.  

At least for now, it appears the EU has little choice but to sit and wait as the UK and US vaccine programmes ramp up while its own effort trails behind.

Overall, the 27-nation EU, a collection of many of the richest countries in the world – most with a universal health care system to boot – is not faring well in comparison to countries like Israel and the United Kingdom. 

Even the United States, whose response to the pandemic has been widely criticized and where tens of thousands of appointments for shots have been canceled because of vaccine shortages, appears to be moving faster.

While Israel has given at least one shot of a two-dose vaccine to over 40% of its population and that figure in Britain is 10%, the EU total stands at just over 2%.

Criticism is also coming from many nations that had been promised surplus doses from the EU, which – like most rich countries – bought enough jabs to vaccine their populations several times over.

But Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who had been promised some of those vaccines, revealed on Wednesday that the EU has so-far given him none – while China has shipped 1million doses.

It is a big turnaround from only a month ago when the EU’s future looked pretty bright. It had just inked a last-minute trade deal with the United Kingdom, clinched a massive 1.8 trillion-euro pandemic recovery and overall budget deal and started rolling out its first COVID-19 vaccines. 

‘This is a very good way to end this difficult year, and to finally start turning the page on COVID-19,’ EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at the time.

By this past weekend, though, her attitude soured as it became clear that the bloc would be getting vaccines at a slower rate than agreed upon for its 450 million people.

AstraZeneca has told the EU that of its initial batch of 80 million, only 31 million would immediately materialize once its vaccine got approved, likely on Friday. That came on the heels of a smaller glitch in the deliveries of Pfizer-BioNTech shots.

Both companies say they are facing operational issues at plants that are temporarily delaying the rollout.

Italy is threatening to take legal action against both over the delay. Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte had been boasting that the country’s rollout was a huge success, especially when the millionth dose was given on Jan. 15. 

But after Pfizer announced the temporary supply reduction, Italy slowed from administering about 80,000 doses a day to fewer than 30,000.

Bulgaria has also criticized the drug companies, and some there have called for the government to turn to Russia and China for vaccines.

Hungary is already doing so. ‘If vaccines aren’t coming from Brussels, we must obtain them from elsewhere. One cannot allow Hungarians to die simply because Brussels is too slow in procuring vaccines,’ Prime Minister Viktor Orban said. ‘It doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.’

But supply isn’t the only thing holding up the EU’s campaign. The problem is partially that the EU Commission bet on the wrong horse – and didn’t get enough doses of the early success vaccines like Pfizer-BioNTech. 

The commission notes there was no way of knowing which vaccines would succeed – and which would be first – and so it had to spread its orders out over several companies.

The EU rollout was also slowed because the European Medicines Agency took more time than the U.S. or U.K. regulators to authorize its first vaccine. 

That was by design as it made sure that the member nations could not be held liable in case of problems and in order to give people more confidence that the shot was safe.

But individual countries also share in the blame.

Germany, Europe’s cliche of an organized and orderly nation, was found sorely wanting, with its rollout marred by chaotic bureaucracy and technological failures, such as those seen Monday when thousands of people over 80 in the country’s biggest state were told they would have to wait until Feb. 8 to get their first shots, even as vast vaccine centers set up before Christmas languished empty.

‘The speed of our action leaves a lot to be desired,’ Chancellor Angela Merkel said. ‘Processes have often become very bureaucratic and take a long time, so we have to work on that.’

It is no different in France, where there is a Kafkaesque maze of rules to get consent for vaccinating the elderly.

In the Netherlands, which banked on the easy-to-handle AstraZeneca vaccine being the first available, authorities had to scramble to make new plans for the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine, whose ultracold storage requirements make it more complicated.

‘We were proven to be insufficiently flexible to make the change,’ said Health Minister Hugo de Jonge.

The Dutch have been particularly criticized since they were the last in the EU to begin vaccinations, more than a week after the first shots were given in the bloc, and they have been especially slow to roll doses out to elderly people living at home.

For exmaple, Jos Bieleveldt, a 90-year-old Dutch retiree, got a coronavirus vaccine this week but blames the EU for taking too long to get it to him.

‘We are dependent on what the European Commission says we can, and cannot, do. As a result, we are at the bottom of the list, it takes far too long,’ he said. 

‘I’m already playing in injury time in terms of my age,’ he added. ‘But I still want to play for a few more years.’

‘Leaving was the right thing to do’: Brexiteers claim EU vaccine chaos PROVES UK made the right decision to split from the bloc as AstraZeneca boss reveals Brussels ordered jabs THREE MONTHS after the UK

Brexiteers have seized on the EU’s vaccine chaos and claimed it proves the UK was right to split from the bloc as the chief executive of AstraZeneca revealed Brussels ordered its jabs three months after Britain.      

The European Commission has threatened to block vaccine exports amid growing criticism of a slow rollout on the continent.  

European health commissioner Stella Kyriakides accused AstraZeneca, which works with Oxford University on its vaccine, of failing to give a valid explanation for failing to deliver doses to the bloc.

But AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot hit back and claimed the EU was being ’emotional’. 

He said ‘the UK contract was signed three months before the European vaccine deal’ which meant there had been an ‘extra three months to fix all the glitches’ in Britain while for Europe ‘we are three months behind in fixing those glitches’.

Eurosceptics said the EU delay on agreeing a contract was ‘absurd’ and evidence the UK is better off as an independent nation. 

Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform UK Party, said: ‘Once vaccines were approved, the British government were very, very quick to act. 

‘In contrast the EU dithered and delayed. Why? Well, of course, it is a bureaucratic process, a grinding machine that can’t do anything quickly and they are always obsessed with something called the precautionary principle which makes it very difficult to get anything new out to consumers. 

‘Fast forward to where we are now since the UK made that decision and I am pleased to say that 10 per cent of the population have now been vaccinated, hopefully we are going to be on target to get the vaccinated by the time Valentine’s Day comes along. 

‘So 10 per cent of the UK has been vaccinated. In the EU the figure is two per cent and that is leading to huge criticism of the European Commission. They are the ones that really make the big decisions.’ 

Mr Farage said the vaccines situation proved the EU is a ‘bad project, run by bad people’ and added: ‘Brexit was the right thing to do.’ 

Tory MP Peter Bone told MailOnline: ‘Do you remember the criticism we faced for not joining the EU vaccination programme?

‘We made the right call as an independent nation and it is clear it was a benefit to us not being tied to the bureaucracy of the EU. 

‘A three month delay is absurd. It is clearly an advantage to not be part of the EU and it is really good for us but sad obviously for the people of the countries of the EU.’

Mr Soriot said in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that there had been ‘teething issues’ in the rollout of the vaccine both in the UK and on the continent. 

He said: ‘But the UK contract was signed three months before the European vaccine deal. 

‘So with the UK we have had an extra three months to fix all the glitches we experienced. 

‘As for Europe, we are three months behind in fixing those glitches. Would I like to do better? Of course. But, you know, if we deliver in February what we are planning to deliver, it’s not a small volume. We are planning to deliver millions of doses to Europe, it is not small.’ 

Mr Soriot said the UK had got a ‘head start’ on its vaccine deal because the Government was already working with Oxford University.

He also dismissed suggestions the firm was selling jabs to other countries to make more money as he said ‘we make no profit everywhere’. 

He said all governments ‘are under pressure’ because of the coronavirus crisis and ‘everybody is getting kind of a bit, you know, aggravated or emotional about those things’. 

Boris Johnson has said he has ‘total confidence’ in the UK’s supply of vaccines after the EU threatened to impose controls on the export of jabs.