Politics this week

The European Union outlined a mechanism to stop exports of covid-19 vaccine components to countries that do not export to the EU, or already have higher vaccination rates. Underlining the disarray in the EU’s inoculation programme, Austria’s chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, threatened to try to stop the bloc from buying an extra 100m doses of Pfizer’s jab if his country did not get a bigger share. He has begun talks with Russia to buy vaccine. Britain, meanwhile, said a domestic factory would produce the new Novavax vaccine, which will reduce the country’s reliance on overseas production.