Como é que um país pensa que sobrevive vacinando os seus mas tendo que viver completamente isolado de todos os outros?
COVID-19: Rejected contracts and a Hollywood movie - how UK struck deal to guarantee vaccine supply
The government is confident over its supply of vaccines - but things could have been very different.
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However, the real source of the government's confidence is its contract with AstraZeneca, which ministers believe commits the pharmaceutical company to delivering UK doses first - a fact confirmed by AstraZeneca boss Pascal Soriot in an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
Whether that guarantee will hold up under a challenge remains to be seen. Yet, according to a former Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) adviser, the UK nearly missed out on this degree of security.
That is because the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was very nearly the Oxford-Merck vaccine - and under the terms of the agreement with the American pharmaceutical giant, there were no guarantees of supply.
The episode played out against the backdrop of the first phase of the pandemic. During March and April 2020, the University of Oxford negotiated a deal which would allow Merck to manufacture and distribute the vaccine it was in the process of developing.
The arrangement made sense. Unlike British-Swedish AstraZeneca, Merck had experience in making vaccines. Its senior executives had links to Oxford scientist and government adviser Sir John Bell.
Yet when the contract reached Matt Hancock's desk, the former adviser said, the health secretary refused to approve it, because it didn't include provisions specifically committing to supply the UK first.
The fear was export controls - not from the EU, but from the US. Mr Hancock was worried that president Trump would stop vaccines from Merck leaving the country.
With the university and Merck "as close to signing on the dotted line as they could be", he stopped it going ahead, because he didn't want to risk the intellectual property rights for the Oxford vaccine ending up in the hands of a single American company.
"He was just meant to confirm he was happy, and then it would have happened immediately," said the former adviser. "But he wasn't, and overruled officials to block the deal."
Reports have suggested that the Oxford scientists were unsure whether the deal with Merck had strong enough provisions for supplying poorer countries with vaccines. Mr Hancock's objection was more local and political. He wanted to make sure there was enough for UK citizens. The rest of the world could come later.
German MEP Peter Liese said the UK was behaving "like Donald Trump" by trying to guarantee it would receive vaccine doses first. In reality, according to this account, it was fear of Trump - or Trump-like behaviour - that prompted the government to seek additional security.
To see how quickly competition for scarce resources could escalate into conflict, Mr Hancock and his advisers only needed to look at their own recent experience. At the same time as negotiations were developing between Oxford and Merck, DHSC was desperately hunting for ways to replenish its threadbare stocks of Personal Protective Equipment.
In NHS hospitals, nurses were wearing bin bags for protective clothing. Yet the scramble to get hold of PPE was made more difficult by European export controls.
However, the real source of the government's confidence is its contract with AstraZeneca, which ministers believe commits the pharmaceutical company to delivering UK doses first - a fact confirmed by AstraZeneca boss Pascal Soriot in an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
Whether that guarantee will hold up under a challenge remains to be seen. Yet, according to a former Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) adviser, the UK nearly missed out on this degree of security.
That is because the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was very nearly the Oxford-Merck vaccine - and under the terms of the agreement with the American pharmaceutical giant, there were no guarantees of supply.
The episode played out against the backdrop of the first phase of the pandemic. During March and April 2020, the University of Oxford negotiated a deal which would allow Merck to manufacture and distribute the vaccine it was in the process of developing.
The arrangement made sense. Unlike British-Swedish AstraZeneca, Merck had experience in making vaccines. Its senior executives had links to Oxford scientist and government adviser Sir John Bell.
Yet when the contract reached Matt Hancock's desk, the former adviser said, the health secretary refused to approve it, because it didn't include provisions specifically committing to supply the UK first.
The fear was export controls - not from the EU, but from the US. Mr Hancock was worried that president Trump would stop vaccines from Merck leaving the country.
With the university and Merck "as close to signing on the dotted line as they could be", he stopped it going ahead, because he didn't want to risk the intellectual property rights for the Oxford vaccine ending up in the hands of a single American company.
"He was just meant to confirm he was happy, and then it would have happened immediately," said the former adviser. "But he wasn't, and overruled officials to block the deal."
Reports have suggested that the Oxford scientists were unsure whether the deal with Merck had strong enough provisions for supplying poorer countries with vaccines. Mr Hancock's objection was more local and political. He wanted to make sure there was enough for UK citizens. The rest of the world could come later.
German MEP Peter Liese said the UK was behaving "like Donald Trump" by trying to guarantee it would receive vaccine doses first. In reality, according to this account, it was fear of Trump - or Trump-like behaviour - that prompted the government to seek additional security.
To see how quickly competition for scarce resources could escalate into conflict, Mr Hancock and his advisers only needed to look at their own recent experience. At the same time as negotiations were developing between Oxford and Merck, DHSC was desperately hunting for ways to replenish its threadbare stocks of Personal Protective Equipment.
In NHS hospitals, nurses were wearing bin bags for protective clothing. Yet the scramble to get hold of PPE was made more difficult by European export controls.
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