What exactly is happening with AstraZeneca?

05-03-2021 01:06PM

dogbert27 wrote: »

From August last year:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-eu-vaccine-price-idUSKBN25N25X

The European Commission has made a 336 million euro ($396 million) downpayment to British drug maker AstraZeneca AZN.L to secure at least 300 million doses of its potential COVID-19 vaccine, a spokesman said on Thursday.

The deal covers development, liability and other costs faced by the vaccine maker. The EU has also secured an option to buy 100 million additional doses of the vaccine under development.

The EU gave them a down payment that also included funding the development. What more do you expect, members of the EU to put on lab coats like Boris and go around for photo shoots?

bunging a wad of cash at a company and hoping they deliver is naive. It is contract management 101. you don't let them hit a bump and hope they get over it, or use it as an excuse, you work with to identify the potential roadblocks and help them avoid them, or take them away completely.

stefanovich · 05-03-2021 01:29PM

astrofool wrote: »

You still are avoiding answering questions you don't like:

But anyway, you seem to now be saying that the UK should start exporting their vaccine supply immediately to other countries, do you agree?

You can't in good faith argue that the EU should keep allowing exports, while not calling for the UK to start exporting immediately.

Not avoiding your question. The actions of the UK and EU are not comparable as the Uk are not blocking anything.

Even if they were, why would the UK's behaviour have anything to do with the EU's treatment of Australia? Is it the union jack in the corner of the flag or does it have anything to do with their right wing government?

stefanovich · 05-03-2021 01:30PM

Aegir wrote: »

bunging a wad of cash at a company and hoping they deliver is naive. It is contract management 101. you don't let them hit a bump and hope they get over it, or use it as an excuse, you work with to identify the potential roadblocks and help them avoid them, or take them away completely.

How many doses did you expect AZ to produce at risk before EU approval?

astrofool · 05-03-2021 01:34PM

stefanovich wrote: »

Not avoiding your question. The actions of the UK and EU are not comparable as the Uk are not blocking anything.

Even if they were, why would the UK's behaviour have anything to do with the EU's treatment of Australia? Is it the union jack in the corner of the flag or does it have anything to do with their right wing government?

So you agree on this:

The UK should immediately start exporting vaccine to other countries that want to buy it.

You're also happy for the UK to not receive further vaccine imports if the countries producing that vaccine want it for themselves.

Got it, will note when your future posts imply otherwise.

stefanovich wrote: »

How many doses did you expect AZ to produce at risk before EU approval?

How many were produced at risk before UK approval?

Try to avoid hypocrisy in your answer.

Wolf359f · 05-03-2021 01:42PM

Aegir wrote: »

bunging a wad of cash at a company and hoping they deliver is naive. It is contract management 101. you don't let them hit a bump and hope they get over it, or use it as an excuse, you work with to identify the potential roadblocks and help them avoid them, or take them away completely.

You would also expect the company to notify their customers if they are looking like they will hit a bump and not wait a week before the delivery date to flag it.

Of course there's issues with how the EU handled or didn't handle AZ, but in some peoples eyes AZ are infallible. It's almost like they are cheering AZ on for taking it to the big bad EU!

05-03-2021 01:49PM

Tippbhoy1 wrote: »

Until the UK displays some generosity with another country before they’ve a surplus, and it doesn’t have to be the EU, then they’ve acted very shabbily through all this in my view

you need to get your head around the global nature of the pharma business. The UK capacity was tiny, it is now big enough to supply the UK market, just. this is only because the UK government recognised this and did something about it.

Astra Zeneca is producing this vaccine all over the world, but the majority will come from the Serum Institute of India. That one factory can produce 100 times what the entire UK can.

If the UK started giving away manufacturing capacity, it would make **** all difference globally, but impact them hard, so they are doing the right thing. Ensire they have their own continuity of supply and contribute to the global vaccination effort by helping to pay for factories like the SII to produce it and distribute it freely to countries that would otherwise not get any.

In my view, wealthy governments not doing this are acting shabbily.

fly_agaric · 05-03-2021 01:51PM

Aegir wrote: »

The EU sat back and presumed that it could not only screw them down further on price, but also bang the table and make them jump. There is plenty of manufacturing capacity in europe for the EU to have done the same, but they didn't.

I don't see it (how the EU could "have done the same" as the UK as people explain it on this thread, usually when defending AZ). I don't think the EU has the powers or capability for what you are suggesting (getting into weeds of what the MNCs are up to and going over member states heads to boss the companies about directly if unhappy). It barely has the power to purchase the vaccines, or keep the member states together on this.

The EU given its nature does have alot of its own trade related powers so could have gone down a "Europe first" road last year + openly signalled it would prevent the export of Covid vaccines being made in the EU unless/until the member states had been supplied first. Doing that would have had its own big risks & set off some international shít storm though + God knows what would have happened.

05-03-2021 01:56PM

Wolf359f wrote: »

You would also expect the company to notify their customers if they are looking like they will hit a bump and not wait a week before the delivery date to flag it.

Of course there's issues with how the EU handled or didn't handle AZ, but in some peoples eyes AZ are infallible. It's almost like they are cheering AZ on for taking it to the big bad EU!

that's true.

you have to ask though, who is the customer, the EU, member states, or the citizens?

Ultimately, you and I are the final beneficiaries and for us, the EU are just a part of the supply chain, so in my opinion, we should treat them all as suppliers and give them equal criticism.

Wolf359f · 05-03-2021 02:26PM

Aegir wrote: »

that's true.

you have to ask though, who is the customer, the EU, member states, or the citizens?

Ultimately, you and I are the final beneficiaries and for us, the EU are just a part of the supply chain, so in my opinion, we should treat them all as suppliers and give them equal criticism.

Silly question really, the EU would be the customer.
EU commission or what ever the technical term is used for contracts.

All it would have taken with AZ is a phone call, well before the delivery deadline to notify the EU of potential delays. Waiting a week before that, I think just pissed them off.

Pfizer had to reduce delivery's in order to upgrade, they gave the EU notice and the EU worked with Pfizer to reduce the delay from 4 weeks to 1 week, I believe. Pfizer also reduced deliveries from those plants to all customers worldwide.

Moderna has a very slow production, but they was all made aware to the EU so there's not been much criticism of them.

astrofool · 05-03-2021 02:33PM

Wolf359f wrote: »

Silly question really, the EU would be the customer.
EU commission or what ever the technical term is used for contracts.

All it would have taken with AZ is a phone call, well before the delivery deadline to notify the EU of potential delays. Waiting a week before that, I think just pissed them off.

Pfizer had to reduce delivery's in order to upgrade, they gave the EU notice and the EU worked with Pfizer to reduce the delay from 4 weeks to 1 week, I believe. Pfizer also reduced deliveries from those plants to all customers worldwide.

Moderna has a very slow production, but they was all made aware to the EU so there's not been much criticism of them.

The one big benefit of all this is the rapid ramp up of the mRNA vaccines, and their widespread use across Europe, which is great given they work so well against any variants found so far.

Tippbhoy1 · 05-03-2021 02:34PM

Wolf359f wrote: »

Silly question really, the EU would be the customer.
EU commission or what ever the technical term is used for contracts.

All it would have taken with AZ is a phone call, well before the delivery deadline to notify the EU of potential delays. Waiting a week before that, I think just pissed them off.

Pfizer had to reduce delivery's in order to upgrade, they gave the EU notice and the EU worked with Pfizer to reduce the delay from 4 weeks to 1 week, I believe. Pfizer also reduced deliveries from those plants to all customers worldwide.

Moderna has a very slow production, but they was all made aware to the EU so there's not been much criticism of them.

They didn’t tell the EU because they were taking all the EU produced stockpile and shipping it to the UK. They then shut down all EU access to uk capacity. They probably were hoping they would get more of a lift from other factories but this hasn’t worked out yet, AZ are out of their depth.

Wolf359f · 05-03-2021 02:43PM

Tippbhoy1 wrote: »

They didn’t tell the EU because they were taking all the EU produced stockpile and shipping it to the UK. They then shut down all EU access to uk capacity. They probably were hoping they would get more of a lift from other factories but this hasn’t worked out yet, AZ are out of their depth.

I've only read about EU factories being used for fill and finish for the UK. I don't see any issue with that if it didn't effect the EU production.

I would actually love to see how many doses of AZ and Pfizer have been exported from the EU. Just to see the volume exported vs volume delivered to the EU for each vaccine.

Strazdas · 05-03-2021 02:47PM

The AZ row has been hugely overstated and misunderstood in the UK. Their public are under the strong impression the slow rollout in Europe has been caused by the AZ contract spat, when in fact 15-20% of vaccines given in Europe are AstraZeneca (and this ratio will probably fall even more when new vaccines are authorised).

ingalway · 05-03-2021 02:47PM

I wonder what will happen if there is a short supply in 10-12 weeks when the second dose of AstraZeneca will be due for many people?

05-03-2021 02:48PM

Tippbhoy1 wrote: »

They didn’t tell the EU because they were taking all the EU produced stockpile and shipping it to the UK. They then shut down all EU access to uk capacity. They probably were hoping they would get more of a lift from other factories but this hasn’t worked out yet, AZ are out of their depth.

and this is because the UK controls Astra Zeneca FACT, I presume :rolleyes:

Wolf359f · 05-03-2021 02:50PM

ingalway wrote: »

I wonder what will happen if there is a short supply in 10-12 weeks when the second dose of AstraZeneca will be due for many people?

Well AZ have 12 weeks to figure out solutions. I'd say if the delivery schedule keeps being bumpy, we may need to keep a buffer for second doses. The same way we did for Pfizer initially.

Wolf359f · 05-03-2021 02:53PM

Aegir wrote: »

and this is because the UK controls Astra Zeneca FACT, I presume :rolleyes:

In certain UK media there's very little difference between the UK and AZ. In fact it's often reffered to as 'our' vaccine as well as 'british doses' etc....

Pete_Cavan · 05-03-2021 02:55PM

Aegir wrote: »

the difference wasn't so much the contract, more the way the UK went about implementing it.

The UK was proactve and made sure that manufacturing capacity was available to produce the vaccines. These are being produced at cost, so there is effectively no incentive for the company to make them. The UK understood this and helped them to bring the product to market.

The EU sat back and presumed that it could not only screw them down further on price, but also bang the table and make them jump. There is plenty of manufacturing capacity in europe for the EU to have done the same, but they didn't.

The EU has been funding vaccine and treatment development since early last year so your claim that they just sat back is untrue;

https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/research-area/health-research-and-innovation/coronavirus-research-and-innovation/financing-innovation_en

05-03-2021 02:59PM

Wolf359f wrote: »

Silly question really, the EU would be the customer.
EU commission or what ever the technical term is used for contracts.

All it would have taken with AZ is a phone call, well before the delivery deadline to notify the EU of potential delays. Waiting a week before that, I think just pissed them off.

Pfizer had to reduce delivery's in order to upgrade, they gave the EU notice and the EU worked with Pfizer to reduce the delay from 4 weeks to 1 week, I believe. Pfizer also reduced deliveries from those plants to all customers worldwide.

Moderna has a very slow production, but they was all made aware to the EU so there's not been much criticism of them.

The late notice to the Eu and this coming at the same time that the EU commissioner was getting a lot of criticism from Germany for the slow approval and the silly stunt of trying to get all countries to administer the first dose at the same time so they could use it as a big display of European solidarity.

Astra Zeneca haven’t covered themselves in glory, but if they turned around and said you can’t have the doses because our supplier can’t deliver bottles, would that have been an acceptable reason?

Of course not, they chose that supplier so it is their responsibility to make sure they deliver. I would give the same responsibility to the Eu.

05-03-2021 03:03PM

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

The EU has been funding vaccine and treatment development since early last year so your claim that they just sat back is untrue;

https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/research-area/health-research-and-innovation/coronavirus-research-and-innovation/financing-innovation_en

a pig and a chicken are both involved in providing us with a fried breakfast, but is that level of involvement the same?

Strazdas · 05-03-2021 03:12PM

ingalway wrote: »

I wonder what will happen if there is a short supply in 10-12 weeks when the second dose of AstraZeneca will be due for many people?

I believe they hold many doses back with this scenario in mind - they don't just use up every dose.

Pete_Cavan · 05-03-2021 03:13PM

Strazdas wrote: »

The AZ row has been hugely overstated and misunderstood in the UK. Their public are under the strong impression the slow rollout in Europe has been caused by the AZ contract spat, when in fact 15-20% of vaccines given in Europe are AstraZeneca (and this ratio will probably fall even more when new vaccines are authorised).

AZ is 15-20% of vaccines given in Europe because they have been so poor at providing it!

Initially they were to supply 100m doses in Q1 2021. They advised that they would only deliver 80m around Nov IIRC. Then in Jan, within the delivery period, they reduced that further to 30m. We should be getting >300k by the end of March but had only received 86,400. They'll be doing well to even hit the vastly reduced target made two months ago with full knowledge of production process.

Wolf359f · 05-03-2021 03:14PM

Aegir wrote: »

Astra Zeneca haven’t covered themselves in glory, but if they turned around and said you can’t have the doses because our supplier can’t deliver bottles, would that have been an acceptable reason?

Of course not, they chose that supplier so it is their responsibility to make sure they deliver. I would give the same responsibility to the Eu.

That's the whole reason for the 'best efforts' in the contract.
If they sat on their arse and a week before they were due to deliver they said they can't because they can't get the bottles from the manufacturer without even trying another manufacturer, or flagging it in advance then it's unacceptable.

The best efforts is to cover AZ for example if Pfizer was using all the bottles and getting preference over AZ etc... They should have notified the EU with the issue and seek a resolution etc.. it's not to be used as an excuse for AZ to cover their arse if they have over promised and under delivered

Strazdas · 05-03-2021 03:20PM

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

AZ is 15-20% of vaccines given in Europe because they have been so poor at providing it!

Initially they were to supply 100m doses in Q1 2021. They advised that they would only deliver 80m around Nov IIRC. Then in Jan, within the delivery period, they reduced that further to 30m. We should be getting >300k by the end of March but had only received 86,400. They'll be doing well to even hit the vastly reduced target made two months ago with full knowledge of production process.

Indeed, but there have also been supply and delivery issues with Pfizer and Moderna in Q1.

The slowish rollout is far more to do with individual member states like Germany and France messing up the rollout than the EU procurement. (British media and their public are convinced it's down to the EU-AZ contract row).

Tippbhoy1 · 05-03-2021 03:42PM

Aegir wrote: »

and this is because the UK controls Astra Zeneca FACT, I presume :rolleyes:

AZ only have the gig because the uk government made it so. Do you dispute this?

If AZ decided in the morning that they were going to try make good with the EU, do you think they would be able to use supply from British factories now that we have both agreed there are no contractual differences of note?

I know you like to make it a British vaccine when it suits you, and when it doesn’t it becomes a private company issue. Maybe if you demonstrated more consistency in your posts and addressed all points when responding to posts rather than just trolling what suits your narrative, then you might get a little more credibility.

05-03-2021 03:43PM

Wolf359f wrote: »

That's the whole reason for the 'best efforts' in the contract.
If they sat on their arse and a week before they were due to deliver they said they can't because they can't get the bottles from the manufacturer without even trying another manufacturer, or flagging it in advance then it's unacceptable.

The best efforts is to cover AZ for example if Pfizer was using all the bottles and getting preference over AZ etc... They should have notified the EU with the issue and seek a resolution etc.. it's not to be used as an excuse for AZ to cover their arse if they have over promised and under delivered

The UK approach to this, was to have a manufacturing expert on the Vaccine task force steering committee, so they could anticipate any potential bottlenecks and address them.

Imagine if (and I accept this is only one possible scenario) early on the in the ramp up, a joint EU and AZ team identified that production of vials was going to be an issue. A quick mail out to all member states looking for suppliers of glass bottles, or companies that could potentially produce glass bottles, would have yielded results pretty quickly.

That's how you manage a supply chain, you don't just look at the level supplying you, you look all along the chain and try to remove blockages.

you then have the added bonus of being able to say "There's the 100 million bottles you need, they are our stock and are to be used for our deliveries only.

Pete_Cavan · 05-03-2021 03:46PM

Strazdas wrote: »

Indeed, but there have also been supply and delivery issues with Pfizer and Moderna in Q1.

The slowish rollout is far more to do with individual member states like Germany and France messing up the rollout than the EU procurement. (British media and their public are convinced it's down to the EU-AZ contract row).

No the first issue is lack of supply, vaccines are being given there just isn't enough. The second issue is reluctance to take AZ vaccine in Germany and France in particular. This partly due to lack of data on effectiveness in over 65s in the AZ trials but the story then got blown out of all proportion with the contract row. The latter would be a much bigger issue if it wasn't for the former.

Pete_Cavan · 05-03-2021 03:59PM

Aegir wrote: »

The UK approach to this, was to have a manufacturing expert on the Vaccine task force steering committee, so they could anticipate any potential bottlenecks and address them.

Imagine if (and I accept this is only one possible scenario) early on the in the ramp up, a joint EU and AZ team identified that production of vials was going to be an issue. A quick mail out to all member states looking for suppliers of glass bottles, or companies that could potentially produce glass bottles, would have yielded results pretty quickly.

That's how you manage a supply chain, you don't just look at the level supplying you, you look all along the chain and try to remove blockages.

you then have the added bonus of being able to say "There's the 100 million bottles you need, they are our stock and are to be used for our deliveries only.

You make it sound so simple. You pick a nice handy issue when in reality producing vaccines is very complicated and the issues AZ are likely multiple. They also didn't flag the issues to their customer so they couldn't do anything about them.

That also ignores the fact that the initial UK doses came from manufacturing sites in the EU. That in itself is fine but when they then refused to replace EU produced vaccines with UK produced ones for the EU, it shows double standards. AZ also claimed at the time that EU supply could only come from within EU, yet when it was suggested last week that they wouldn't meet Q2 targets, they said they could use vaccines produced elsewhere. Why did this suddenly change and are these doses which others think are going to them? Also, the facilty in Belgium said that they didn't have production issues as AZ claimed so it is hard to know what is really going on.

05-03-2021 04:28PM

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

You make it sound so simple. You pick a nice handy issue when in reality producing vaccines is very complicated and the issues AZ are likely multiple. They also didn't flag the issues to their customer so they couldn't do anything about them.

well, yeah. you don't take the suppliers word for it basically, not for something that is criticial.

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

That also ignores the fact that the initial UK doses came from manufacturing sites in the EU. That in itself is fine but when they then refused to replace EU produced vaccines with UK produced ones for the EU, it shows double standards. AZ also claimed at the time that EU supply could only come from within EU, yet when it was suggested last week that they wouldn't meet Q2 targets, they said they could use vaccines produced elsewhere. Why did this suddenly change and are these doses which others think are going to them? Also, the facilty in Belgium said that they didn't have production issues as AZ claimed so it is hard to know what is really going on.

that's irrelevant. it isn't done on a lend lease basis. If AZ told the UK government that they had supply issues at the UK sites, but spare capacity at sites in Italy and Belgium, then that has nothing to do with the UK.

there are/were no "EU" stocks, there were just stocks.

brickster69 · 05-03-2021 04:41PM

Little Cyprus doing well with the older people. 84% of over 80's has a had a shot now.

https://knews.kathimerini.com.cy/en/news/the-bet-that-cyprus-is-winning

What exactly is happening with AstraZeneca?

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