UK restricts COVID medicine exports amid AstraZeneca vaccine fight

The U.K. placed a series of export restrictions last year on around 100 medicines that could be used to treat COVID-19 patients despite criticizing others for considering similar limits on vaccines. In response to a question from POLITICO, Prime Minister Boris Johnson chastised the EU at a press conference in Downing Street Tuesday for considering putting restrictions on the export of coronavirus vaccines — calling such curbs 'nonsensical.' His comments follow increasingly heated rhetoric from the European Commission directed at AstraZeneca over its inability to fulfil orders made by the bloc for its vaccine. The Commission is now considering a plan to mandate that companies inform Brussels ahead of making any shipments of vaccine out of the EU.