Brexit won't stop a coronavirus vaccine reaching the UK

The Brexit culture wars are back. On Saturday, the Guardian published an article entitled: ‘Brexit means coronavirus vaccine will be slower to reach the UK.’ As usual with such pieces, the words ‘if’ and ‘could’ do more heavy lifting than Atlas.

The gist of the article’s argument is that leaving the European Medicines Agency (EMA) means the UK will no longer be able to benefit from processes that expedite the authorisation of pharmaceuticals for use. This is because manufacturers may decide to meet the approval process for the much larger EU market first before applying to the UK regulator for approval here. That might be true, but only if the UK sets its own regulations in this way. There is an alternative to this approach, which the authors recognise briefly:

‘The UK could, in theory, choose to recognise any approval decision made by the EMA to prevent delays, but this seems at odds with the UK government’s pledge to ‘take back control’.’