Coronavirus live news: UK says EU vaccine threat 'needs explaining'; Tanzania president dies

EU threatens to block vaccine exports; John Magafuli, one of Africa’s most prominent Covid-19 sceptics, dies of ‘heart condition’; Brazil daily cases top 90,000 for the first time

The British foreign minister, Dominic Raab, said on Wednesday that the European commission’s threat to ban exports of Covid-19 vaccines cut across previous assurances, adding that the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, needed to explain herself.

Raab told Reuters:

I think it takes some explaining, because the world’s watching. We’ve, all of us, including with our European friends, been saying throughout the pandemic that you’d be wrong to curtail or interfere with lawfully-contracted supply. We all said it last year on PPE. We’ve been saying it this year, on vaccines and other things.

Frankly, I’m surprised we’re having this conversation. It is normally what the UK and EU team up with to reject when other countries with less democratic regimes than our own engage in that kind of brinkmanship.

Hello and welcome to today’s live coverage of the coronavirus pandemic with me, Helen Sullivan.

As always, you can find me on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

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