Because even though several parts of the world are also longing to save lives, the 30 million doses in West Chester and another about ten million doses in a similar factory in Maryland will stay in the United States.

Is it because the US needs the doses right now?

No, Astra Zeneca is up to a month away from even applying for a vaccine approval in the United States.

Forced to get approved

Instead, it's because of something that happened in May.

Then Astra Zeneca signed an agreement with the Donald Trump administration.

Trump agreed to fund Astra Zeneca's vaccine production with up to $ 1.2 billion in exchange for Astra Zeneca offering the United States 300 million doses of the vaccine if it proved to work.

The agreement was reached in accordance with the Defense Production Act, the Defense Manufacturing Act, which forces pharmaceutical companies to be approved by Joe Biden for each shipment of vaccine abroad.

So when Astra Zeneca has now asked the Biden Administration to send doses to the EU, the answer has been, in short, no, thank you.

Johnson & Johnson received the same response when they asked to "lend" ten million doses to the EU, as deliveries lagged behind.


From a European point of view, US handling has been called an export ban.

There is no such thing formally, but since the Biden Administration requires pharmaceutical companies to fulfill their agreements to deliver doses in the US before exporting doses to other locations, there is in practice an export ban right now.

EU countries, including Italy, have also been criticized for being protectionist about their vaccine doses, but while the EU has already exported over 34 million doses, Joe Biden's message from the United States has been different.

"We will start by making sure that Americans are taken care of first," he said on Wednesday, adding: "If we have a surplus, we will share it with the rest of the world."

"America first"

From an American perspective, the answer is natural.

Joe Biden has promised to do everything in his power to get the United States out of the pandemic as quickly as possible, and it would be more or less a political suicide for him to start sharing doses that could have gone to Americans later.

The motto "America first" is very much alive during the pandemic.

The image of the United States now risks being that the country has accepted the risk that people who could have been saved with the help of the vaccine will die, while vaccine doses are collecting dust.

Accusations of this kind - and that countries have blood on their hands - may be directed at all countries that are perceived to hold on to vaccines that the country does not seem to need at the moment, as vaccine nationalism gets worse in the coming weeks.

The risk of a trade war over vaccines is now imminent, something that Foreign Minister Anna Hallberg also warned about this week.

It could greatly worsen relations between countries that see each other as allies.


Astra Zeneca's vaccine lasts about five months in a warehouse.

In other words, the clock in West Chester, Ohio is ticking fast.

In this context, it feels funny that West Chester until the year 2000 had a completely different name that is now gone - Union.