The EU will extend its export control mechanism for Covid-19 vaccines for another three months, until the end the year, and then replace it with a “monitoring” scheme, the European Commission has said.

The export control mechanism, introduced on Jan 29, means makers of Covid-19 vaccines produced in the EU need to get approval before shipping the doses outside the bloc.

It was brought in at the start of the EU's vaccination roll-out, which was extremely sluggish initially because of a big shortfall in the amount of doses UK-Swedish company AstraZeneca had promised.