Italy has blocked a shipment to Australia of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine in the first such export ban under an EU vaccine monitoring scheme, EU sources reported.

Rome’s order blocking the dispatch of 250,000 doses produced at an AstraZeneca plant in Italy was accepted by the European Commission, which has fiercely criticized the Anglo-Swedish company this year for supplying just a fraction of the doses it had promised to deliver to the bloc.