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What exactly is happening with AstraZeneca?

hatrickpatrick

The news has been full of stories about AstraZeneca having slashed their initial vaccine deliveries to the EU by 60% and the knock on fallout from that. But what’s either being buried in all the reporting, or simply hasn’t been reported at all, is what exactly happened? What’s the reason for the delay? Technical, logistical, commercial, etc?

I assumed it was similar to what was happening with Pfizer, which is essentially an issue of manufacturing capacity being reduced by an upgrade to their production facility. But what seems odd about the AstraZeneca situation is the anger directed towards them from officials and leaders, plus public statements that “They must honour their delivery commitments”, indicating that this isn’t an act-of-God type mishap in manufacturing, but an act of incompetence and/or willful reneging on the agreement - perhaps their capacity has remained the same but they’ve “bumped” the EU’s order in priority because others are paying more, or something along these lines?

Does anyone know what exactly the situation is? I can’t seem to find anything beyond extremely vague statements at the moment.

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Hurrache

Don't think it's them playing hardball, they've been caught in a lie of their own making by initially claiming the issue was supply problems, yet these supply problems aren't having an affect on any other customer.

froog

on the radio now - AZ are playing hardball. talk of the UK not having any supply problems.

this won't end well.

NeuralNetwork

Yeah it would seem quite unlikely she'd come out that strong on the topic if it were something small.

el Fenomeno

For her to come out and specifically mention concerns that they've sold/delivered then elsewhere is pretty sensational. Usually these accusations are hinted at or suggested, but to outright say it - yikes.

froog

the level of anger would seem to point to the EU knowing AZ is thinking about or has already supplied other customers, cutting into the EU agreement. rather than simple supply calculation/capacity f#ckups.

[Deleted User]

I'm kind of wondering if AZ had done some of the at risk manufacturing, but were peeved by the EMA's comments over Christmas that better data was needed, so they decided EMA approval was going to take longer than they had originally anticipated and shipped what they had made elsewhere where approval was closer or granted. Thinking they could catch up by the time EMA approval came through.

NeuralNetwork

The European Commission is concerned about where its money went basically.

AstraZeneca were paid €336 million as a downpayment to assist with the R&D and production expansion effort and there's a commitment to order €750m worth of product from them. That isn't small change.

Stella Kyriakides, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety's statement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLIs2tZ7Cp4

As to what's happening. The answer is we don't know, but by the looks of it we'll be finding out shortly. She seems to be absolutely furious and I don't think they would kick off that level of undiplomatic language without there being more to this than a little misunderstanding.

Hopefully that's all it is though, but we'll see. There's a meeting tonight.

hatrickpatrick

Donald Trump wrote: »

I got the impression that the EU signed up which would have allowed the company to proceed with pushing through development and testing and building up capacity as they already had a buyer guaranteed. EU might even have put a chunk of money down as prepayment to allow them to speed it up.

It seems now that there is an implication that they are deciding that now they have the final product in the bag and ready to go that they might be tempted to supply others before fulfilling their contractual obligations.

This would make more sense than a genuine production capacity issue, certainly. Surely the consequence of doing this would be profound in terms of international contractual law not to mention EU licensing etc? Or is it a case of that being enough of a gamble to take given the potential money to be made in other markets?

Donald Trump

I got the impression that the EU signed up which would have allowed the company to proceed with pushing through development and testing and building up capacity as they already had a buyer guaranteed. EU might even have put a chunk of money down as prepayment to allow them to speed it up.

It seems now that there is an implication that they are deciding that now they have the final product in the bag and ready to go that they might be tempted to supply others before fulfilling their contractual obligations.

GPoint

AstraZeneca vaccine production unscathed after fire breaks out at Serum Institute of India complex

https://www.fiercepharma.com/manufacturing/astrazeneca-vaccine-production-unscathed-after-fire-breaks-out-at-serum-institute

This was few days ago, however their announcements about delays came out around the same time.