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LONDON, April 8 (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of doses
of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been flown to Australia
from the United Kingdom but the source of the shipments was kept
quiet to avoid any controversy in the United Kingdom, The Sydney
Morning Herald reported.
The first 300,000 UK-made doses landed at Sydney Airport on
February 28 – one month after the European Commission introduced
new curbs limiting the export of vaccines produced on the
continent, the newspaper said.
Another large batch arrived on an Emirates passenger plane
in March, well after Italy and the European Commission formally
blocked an application by AstraZeneca to ship 250,000 doses to
Australia, the newspaper said.
The newspaper cited an unidentified British official as
saying that the shipments to Australia were never at the expense
of the UK’s vaccine rollout - one of the swiftest in the world.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and
Sarah Young)
