What exactly is happening with AstraZeneca?

monkeybutter wrote: »

but you would be a monkey all the same

when did the eu order and when did the uk?
I belive the UK ordered 3 moths before the EU.

would you promise me that AZ would have been able to deliver?
No me i would not be able to. We don't know what the small print in the contract was but the EU have asked AZ to publish the contract. The contract is something for the courts

would they still have taken it from the UK plants or the EU ones
The UK had issues when the vaccine first rolled out.
Some people would say that AZ have given ones that was going to the EU was sent to the UK and other countries. Other people will say this is not true. This is a matter between the EU and AZ and id say this will end up in the courts.

I think the court is the best place for this now.

CrabRevolution wrote: »

Actually there's another contradiction on the anti-EU arguments.

We've been told for the last few weeks that we need to break ranks with the EU and offer a blank cheque to the vaccine makers to get a huge supply now. Yet apparently the order in which countries get vaccines is already set in stone based on when they signed their contracts starting last summer.

So if we have to wait for the previous contracts to be fulfilled before getting our own, how could we order any vaccines for delivery now?

And if we can order them now, doesn't that mean the order in which contracts are signed is irrelevant?

Which is it?

Nah that's disingenuously simplifying the argument.

The argument about precedence and what's in the contract is specifically about Astra Zeneca' Europe/UK supply chain.

We could for example buy Sputnik, we could buy the Chinese vaccines (not sure this is a good idea depending of effectiveness but it could be done).
We could send Leo Varadkar over to the Serum Institute in India with a brief case full of cash and a promise of significant investment in their production if they place a priority order that's relatively small for them.
We could attempt the Israeli thing and what I think the gulf states are doing which is basically throwing money around.

We could approach the UK and ask if their (possible not confirmed) exclusivity for 100 million doses of internal Astra Zeneca supply results in a calculated excess that in aid of an all Ireland /British isles Covid-19 areas could we pretty please have some, e.g if UK production capacity exceeds ability of UK to deliver doses into arms each month/week could Ireland buy the excess.


For the record I don't think anything but Sputnik or Sinopharm is that workable now, this probably would have worked a few months ago though.

mick087 wrote: »

when did the eu order and when did the uk?
I belive the UK ordered 3 moths before the EU.

would you promise me that AZ would have been able to deliver?
No me i would not be able to. We don't know what the small print in the contract was but the EU have asked AZ to publish the contract. The contract is something for the courts

would they still have taken it from the UK plants or the EU ones
The UK had issues when the vaccine first rolled out.
Some people would say that AZ have given ones that was going to the EU was sent to the UK and other countries. Other people will say this is not true. This is a matter between the EU and AZ and id say this will end up in the courts.

I think the court is the best place for this now.

but you understand the complexity of the whole situation right


what dates did the uk order, and did it make any difference


yes they approved it beforehand

monkeybutter wrote: »

you do realize they were suggesting herd immunity without the vaccine

At the start yes i know this and i did not agree with that.
But now we have a situation that more people could die from other medical issues because of the lack of treatment all hospitals are tied up with covid.


The Oxford vaccine i would of took as soon as it came out in the UK if i been given the choice. Maybe you would not and i suspect many others would not to.

monkeybutter wrote: »

why are you not out here trying to get your hands on the CHINA-Vaccine so, or the russian one

I don't live in Russia or China but if i did i expect i would of take this vaccine.

I think people are losing sight, or choosing to lose sight, of the overall picture here.

Firstly, I think the EU will put enough pressure on to alleviate some of this issue. But if you look at the overall plan, if we never receive this shortfall, it only puts the plan back 10 days over the course of the programme, that's it. And that will likely be backfilled if most others go to plan.

The issue is in the short-term, it'll likely delay vaccinating the more vulnerable. But if the EMA only authorise for use in younger cohorts, I'm not sure it makes a huge difference. Obviously that remains to be seen.

IAmTheReign wrote: »

No it would not be possible. You can't just walk into a biotech plant and start manufacturing whatever drug you want. you need to assess the whole facility, figure out what equipment needs to be modified, if new equipment needs to be installed, then you have to actually modify it and test it and prove that it's fit for purpose. After that you have to do multiple trial batches and only if they're successful can you then apply for permission to manufacture the drug. This is a time consuming and very expensive process. The sites manufacturing COVID vaccines started doing all this work last March and are only now able to manufacture drugs that can be sold.

There's also the slight hurdle of not actually having a drug you can manufacture. New medicines are patented and pharma companies are pretty big on defending their IP.

Did Sanofi not announce this week they are switching some plants to start manufacture?

Did I misunderstand (likely) or would this switch have been started months ago and only announced now?

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

The contracts do not interact. AZ are bound by the terms of their contract with the EU which is entirely separate to any contract they have with the UK. The contracts sit side by side, not one before the other. They are also bound by the terms of their contract with the UK.

If, as it seems, AZ failed to disclose to the EU a clause in a pre-existing contract (that with the UK) which prevents them for fulfilling their contractual obligations to the EU, then they entered into the contract in bad faith which could have serious repercussions. No contract in the other contract (with the UK), limits their obligations in their contract with the EU.

They took EU money but the product is going elsewhere, this is looking dangerously close to a ponzi scheme.

Yes but as the CEO stated, it's a best effort contract with the EU,

So we said, “ok, we're going to do our best, we’re going to try, but we cannot commit contractually because we are three months behind UK”. We knew it was a super stretch goal and we know it's a big issue, this pandemic. But our contract is not a contractual commitment. It's a best effort. Basically we said we're going to try our best, but we can't guarantee we're going to succeed.

The contracts sit side by side but it seems pretty likely that the contracts are not the same.
If I order a Games console with a guaranteed delivery and exclusivity of purchase I will receive stock before someone who orders later with a "best efforts" clause for a certain date.

I have no experience with contracts but is a delivering party bound to inform the bidding party of the terms and conditions that have been agreed with other parties as long as they can show that they entered the contract in good faith, remember the UK had huge shortfall and delay on their initial order but there was not the accusations of bad faith.

This would be a lot more clear if there had been more openness in terms of the EU Commission until now. I can read the UK Astra Zenecas Chief giving responses to a parliamentary committee meeting for example whereas for the EU commission they have been relatively secretive until now just holding fairly scripted press questions (they only released the other redacted contract with the other manufacturer after the ombudsman got onto them AFAIK).

Also ask again, what's the explanation for the significantly different cost per dose between the EU and UK, as they are producing at cost, did the UK have the raised costs because they put money into manufacturing in a way the EU didn't.

CIARAN_BOYLE wrote: »

Mrna vaccines is a category of its own by my understanding.

If you have a mrna vaccine factory its not to hard to switch one to doing a different mrna vaccine.

Sanofi had a mrna vaccine of their own in trials and they were building factories for it. Those will be used for a different mrna vaccine now.

AFAIK there are no mrna vaccine factories in Ireland at present.

OK, thank you.

Libb1964 wrote: »

My 84 year old mother has been given her first dose of the Oxford vaccine with no appointment date for when she will be given her second.

I am pro vaccine but do not believe that until she is given her 2nd dose, at least within 12 weeks, she is in anyway immunised.

This fiasco has nothing to do with either how the EU or how the UK handled procurement. AZ are coming across as chancers. As a poster said earlier this is looking more and more like a ponzi scheme

Good to hear your mother got the vaccine.

How would you feel If your mother had been delayed and part of the reason was your government ordered the vaccine 3 months later and had still not approved its use.

Imagine yourself looking at another country who had got the vaccine who's mothers was getting vaccinated and had that country had approved the vaccine how would you feel then?

mick087 wrote: »

Good to hear your mother got the vaccine.

How would you feel If your mother had been delayed and part of the reason was your government ordered the vaccine 3 months later and had still not approved its use.

Imagine yourself looking at another country who had got the vaccine who's mothers was getting vaccinated and had that country had approved the vaccine how would you feel then?

how would you feel if your mother died because they had taken short cuts with the vaccine


i mean they could have released it at the end of the summer with no trials etc


sure it might have been fine

josip wrote: »

Which looks like they are trying to win the case in the Court of Public Opinion.
Wouldn't they be breaching the confidentiality clause/NDA by publishing without AZ agreement?

Yes it would be a breach..
But I can't see how the worst that could happen from that would be worse than the crisis they are facing now.
I mean if their contract is as watertight as they say they it is they will sue AstraZeneca to kingdom come for non-disclosure of material facts relating to the two UK sites.

trixi001 wrote: »

This is what the bbc are reporting about the initial supply coming from the EU - most of the production still took place in the UK

"Some doses were sent to Germany and the Netherlands last year for a process called fill-and-finish, which involves putting it into vials. This is now being done at a plant in Wrexham, creating a complete UK supply chain.

And that arrangement, AstraZeneca sources say, had no impact on the production problems the EU vaccine manufacturing plants experienced.

Making a vaccine is a biological process - there are no guarantees in terms of quantity.

The fact the UK was quick off the mark gave the UK plants more time to tweak the process to get a better yield"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55838272

These are not EU or UK plants, they are AZ controlled regardless of where they are located. AZ have to fulfill their contractual commitments to both parties. The British media may present it as everything in the UK being better because they are wonderful but it is all down to AZ and their management of production across all sites, not EU or UK.

This thing about the UK being "quicker" is a total smokescreen. Last June, AZ agreed to supply doses to the EU before the end of last year. The EU even put up hundreds of millions of euro in advanced payments to facilitate production.