What exactly is happening with AstraZeneca?

NeuralNetwork · 13-03-2021 11:39AM

brickster69 wrote: »

AZ has 4 places where they make it in the EU. Two of which make the material and two the fill and finish. The Dutch one is not producing because the site is not approved by the EMA. So basically the EU output is 50% of what it should be hence the delays.

It is the middle of March for God's sake

And for some reason the plant has allegedly not applied for approval to the EMA, despite being asked.

The EMA can’t approve a company that doesn’t apply.

It was the same with the AstraZeneca vaccine approval itself. The company didn’t apply for approval until 12 January 2021.

They seem to just not want to engage with the EU.

Perhaps the price per dose negotiated is too low or something, or they’re just not interested as they have their capacity dedicated to other markets.

The commission needs to step in and actually apply some kind of state involvement in supporting the logistics of manufacturing.

The gap is the European Union institutions have no background whatsoever in doing anything like that and neither have the legal powers nor the resources to do something like that. The EU is not equivalent to the US federal government. There’s no department of health or anything similar - just a very embryonic unit that’s far, far less resourced as health isn’t an EU pooled competence.

There’s also no FEMA (federal emergency management agency) counterpart or any kind of EU military infrastructure that can be used to do anything like civil defence. It’s not a federal government, despite tabloid fantasies, in reality, it’s a rather loose and lightly resourced set of bodies that rely on coordination of networks of resources from the 27 member states.

There is logic to the joint purchase, as it would have resulted in a messy vaccine grab by individual member states, but the resources need to be there too and I don’t just mean money. They need urgently to be helped by member states to get the expertise in place to manage this.

Gile_na_gile · 13-03-2021 11:45AM

Elessar wrote: »

Found the article via Google:

A Íosa Críost! Could they tell us definitively how much, if any, is being exported while AZ dither? Who is more useless, AZ or the commissioners investigating?!

NeuralNetwork · 13-03-2021 11:51AM

Gile_na_gile wrote: »

A Íosa Críost! Could they tell us definitively how much, if any, is being exported while AZ dither? Who is more useless, AZ or the commissioners investigating?!

I suspect they can’t because the plant that is exporting has no licence to produce product for sale in the EU. So it’s export only.

You can see how they might be side stepping this...

Don’t apply for a licence and you’re not making a product that’s usable here. It’s just biological pharma production etc.

brickster69 · 13-03-2021 11:55AM

Gile_na_gile wrote: »

A Íosa Críost! Could they tell us definitively how much, if any, is being exported while AZ dither? Who is more useless, AZ or the commissioners investigating?!

Sounds like 3 parties are useless

13-03-2021 11:55AM

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

The gap is the European Union institutions have no background whatsoever in doing anything like that and neither have the legal powers nor the resources to do something like that. The EU is not equivalent to the US federal government. There’s no department of health or anything similar - just a very embryonic unit that’s far, far less resourced as health isn’t an EU pooled competence.

Exactly, which is why they should have stayed out of it and just insisted Italy, Germany, France and the Netherlands (or whoever the original consortium was) to order on their behalf.

Instead, the commission wanted to play the hero.

Gile_na_gile · 13-03-2021 11:59AM

brickster69 wrote: »

Sounds like 3 parties are useless

Sounds like the Dutch government should mediate here, instead of standing back with hands in pockets.

NeuralNetwork · 13-03-2021 12:06PM

Aegir wrote: »

Exactly, which is why they should have stayed out of it and just insisted Italy, Germany, France and the Netherlands (or whoever the original consortium was) to order on their behalf.

Instead, the commission wanted to play the hero.

They stayed out of the PPE purchase initially and there was near disaster and countries grabbing supplies, seizing resources from warehouses and applying internal export bans within the single market and blocking movement of goods.

We might have to just accept that 27 countries that in-fight are not the equivalent of the USA, so this will just go slowly because we are a bunch of messers in reality and can’t organise a pi$$ up in a brewery.

You’ve a former member sniping & sneering on the sidelines, 2 members going off in a hissyfit to somehow develop 2nd generation vaccines with a 3rd country, despite none of them having produced a 1st generation vaccine, everyone’s yelling at Brussels, yet I see nobody offering practical help or volunteering to pool financial or logistical resources and you’ve several eastern newer members running off to mother Russia and China.

Meanwhile the press is swimming in euro scepticism and the several countries, including large ones like France could well end up failing to get to herd immunity levels due to insane levels of anti vaccine sentiment and conspiracy theories.

My view of it is that the EU isn’t capable, as a region, not just the institutions, of responding to a major crisis.

It might be time to just accept that European countries are weak, very disorganised as a bloc and often behave as good time friends.

I’m not saying this in support of Brexit, but that’s just more symptoms of the same mentality of being unable to function as “Team Europe”.

As the saying goes, hang together or you’ll all be hanged separately.

mick087 · 13-03-2021 12:53PM

The chan chan man wrote: »

I don’t trust this one at all. I’m not anti vax by any means, but this particular Astra Zeneca one sounds like a balls up. No thanks.

The Vaccine is excellent don't let the political nonsense or the scaremongers on here put you off taking it.

All the vaccines being given in Ireland are excellent.

13-03-2021 12:56PM

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

They stayed out of the PPE purchase initially and there was near disaster and countries grabbing supplies, seizing resources from warehouses and applying internal export bans within the single market and blocking movement of goods.

We might have to just accept that 27 countries that in-fight are not the equivalent of the USA, so this will just go slowly because we are a bunch of messers in reality and can’t organise a pi$$ up in a brewery.

You’ve a former member sniping & sneering on the sidelines, 2 members going off in a hissyfit to somehow develop 2nd generation vaccines with a 3rd country, despite none of them having produced a 1st generation vaccine, everyone’s yelling at Brussels, yet I see nobody offering practical help or volunteering to pool financial or logistical resources and you’ve several eastern newer members running off to mother Russia and China.

Meanwhile the press is swimming in euro scepticism and the several countries, including large ones like France could well end up failing to get to herd immunity levels due to insane levels of anti vaccine sentiment and conspiracy theories.

My view of it is that the EU isn’t capable, as a region, not just the institutions, of responding to a major crisis.

It might be time to just accept that European countries are weak, very disorganised as a bloc and often behave as good time friends.

I’m not saying this in support of Brexit, but that’s just more symptoms of the same mentality of being unable to function as “Team Europe”.

As the saying goes, hang together or you’ll all be hanged separately.

I don’t think it’s that European countries are weak and disorganized, more that when push comes to shove, a country’s government will look after its own citizens first, which is what they should do.

This will be used by some as an excuse as to why Europe should be only a trading bloc, others as why the obvious solution is a federal Europe.

McGiver · 13-03-2021 01:01PM

Danzy wrote:

The Brits and Americans were very proactive in supporting companies making it. More than just throwing money at it. Very proactive in ordering, very proactive in rollout.

Nonsense. Evidence please.

NeuralNetwork · 13-03-2021 01:18PM

Aegir wrote: »

I don’t think it’s that European countries are weak and disorganized, more that when push comes to shove, a country’s government will look after its own citizens first, which is what they should do.

This will be used by some as an excuse as to why Europe should be only a trading bloc, others as why the obvious solution is a federal Europe.

But in a world of big power players, that is a serious weakness. You can’t look after your own citizens first if you don’t have access to the scale, resources and technology and those vaccine supply chains are EU wide, with various aspects in various countries.

If you look at the vaccine situation. There’s scale in the EU, which is why we’ve a big pharma and biopharma presence here, be it European or multinational. There’s also an R&D and science capability in Europe that is genuinely world leading and has driven several of the vaccines’ development. That’s given us huge scientific and manufacturing strength and when the good times roll, we all used that scale to our mutual and collective benefit.

When a crisis hit, the reaction of many was immediately to retreat to nationalism. That’s why we had the initial PPE crisis, although that was worse as PPE isn’t made in the EU or the US in large quantities anyway.

What we’re having at the moment is a stark demonstration of a lack of ability to coordinate what are in reality very ample resources in a crisis. We basically should have a European counterpart to FEMA and a lot more cooperation on health.

ek motor · 13-03-2021 01:28PM

McGiver wrote: »

Nonsense. Evidence please.

The evidence is they are miles ahead of the EU in their rollout

astrofool · 13-03-2021 01:38PM

The thing to remember is that this storm is all around AstraZeneca, other suppliers seem to be setting and reaching the targets being set. One (basically nationalised at this stage) company f*cking up, and people (with an agenda mostly, it must be said) expect the EU to start breaking up, it's completely ridiculous.

It will get sorted in the medium term (its sound more like AZ is manipulating the Netherlands plant not to go for approval so they can keep exporting, which is a bit machiavellian), and everything will eventually come out, and could end up backfiring badly on AstraZeneca for the future (or the UK will just keep it as an in house producer for the NHS).

As part of the deal with Oxford, the vaccine is to be supplied at cost, there is no "someone is paying more" for it driving where the vaccine are going, if there is, then it will come out as corruption at some point.

It's also good to see the EU take point and supply vaccines worldwide which is what's needed to keep the virus under control, while some other countries only look inward.

Melanchthon · 13-03-2021 01:40PM

Isn't Moderna massively behind in production though? They tend to get ignored here

astrofool · 13-03-2021 01:47PM

Melanchthon wrote: »

Isn't Moderna massively behind in production though? They tend to get ignored here

Majority of Moderna supplies are for the US right now, so supply levels for Europe are lower, but have been planned for and included in the roll out plans, what they have been scheduling has been arriving, unlike AZ who have been cancelling deliveries at the last minute a lot of weeks. Moderna supply will start increasing as new capacity comes online, but Pfizer (and J&J) will probably be the majority cases for Europe.

Strazdas · 13-03-2021 01:49PM

Melanchthon wrote: »

Isn't Moderna massively behind in production though? They tend to get ignored here

I believe the only place they are supplying in big quantities is the US. Their numbers for the EU are much smaller and will continue to be - they will be one of the least used EU vaccines.

The way things are heading, it looks like Pfizer and J & J will be the big two in Europe this year.

Pete_Cavan · 13-03-2021 01:57PM

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

But in a world of big power players, that is a serious weakness. You can’t look after your own citizens first if you don’t have access to the scale, resources and technology and those vaccine supply chains are EU wide, with various aspects in various countries.

If you look at the vaccine situation. There’s scale in the EU, which is why we’ve a big pharma and biopharma presence here, be it European or multinational. That’s given us huge scientific and manufacturing strength and when the good times roll, we all used that scale to our mutual and collective benefit.

When a crisis hit, the reaction of many was immediately to retreat to nationalism. That’s why we had the initial PPE crisis, although that was worse as PPE isn’t made in the EU or the US in large quantities anyway.

What we’re having at the moment is a stark demonstration of a lack of ability to coordinate what are in reality very ample resources in a crisis. We basically should have a European counterpart to FEMA and a lot more cooperation on health.

Nationalism is a problem here but possibly a bigger one is nationalisation. The UK and USA have effectively nationalised the production of vaccines within their borders and prevented them from being exported, for their own benefit but to the detriment of the rest of the world. I'm not sure doing the same was really possible for the EU (given it is not a nation) and it likely would have had all sorts of negative consequences.

Certainly if the EU had followed a similar approach, there would be at least 35m less doses (that figure was in a tweet during the week but not sure when that was until and the figure could be a good bit higher today) in several other countries, including those currently preventing export from their own country. Really, the EU approach is a fairer one and for future pandemics, very few countries will have the option of following the UK/US strategy this time. Only relatively few countries have the resources to produce vaccines within their borders and for most that do, they come from large multinational corporations over which the local government has limited control. Going forward nationalisation should be avoided, particularly as next time China might control the only

Bear in mind that most of the doses given in the UK have been imported, including all their Pfizer and several million AZ doses which came from EU manufacturing sites. Their success has been based on keeping what gets made in their country but taking what gets made in other countries. This by definition can't work on a larger scale. If everyone took the same approach, most countries would be left waiting for others to send something their way, including the UK.

Strazdas · 13-03-2021 01:57PM

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

Brexit has really cast a toxic haze over this, particularly in the anglophone media because to London journalists the assumption is that world revolves around Brexit and Tory politics.

You’re better to look at the AstraZeneca and EU issues without all that stuff.

As I see it AstraZeneca is not used to doing this kind of scale or production. It’s a very different product to what they normally produce and they are over promising and spinning. Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna seem to be much less likely to spin positives and then not deliver.

The reality of it is the EU order is absolutely vast. The U.K. comparison isn’t comparing like with like. There are big supply bandwidth issues to get that volume.

I also think tbh that Trump was a big issue in how this panned out. If 2020 had been under a different administration, I think you may have seen US-EU coordination. Instead, you’re seeing fortress America, the legacy of America First and the EU based plants basically ending up supplying a lot of western countries like Canada, Israel and the U.K. etc without any US capacity being available.

It was fairly inevitable you were going to see extreme vaccine nationalism from the USA though. I mean Trump even floated the idea of buying BioNTech & CureVac to secure exclusive supplies for the US. He saw access to vaccines as a way of screwing over “enemies” basically. And his enemy list, rather bizarrely, included the EU and Canada ... European plants shouldn’t be shouldering that alone. I think it’s going to raise a lot of questions about future US acquisitions of EU biopharma and pharma too if the US isn’t really a friendly partner anymore. I think the days of friendly Uncle Sam may well be fading and the U.K. seems to be just getting weirder by the day.

I just find it rather shocking to see the EU being accused of being the nasty, vaccine hoarder when it’s been EU based plants facilitating supplies to countries that are rolling out faster than the EU itself, including the U.K. and Israel.

I don’t know what exactly Austria and Denmark were up to storming off to Israel, given two of the most likely successful second generation vaccines are both German / EU products mRNA vaccines from BioNTech & CureVac. It just looks like a big Eurosceptic, Brexity hissyfit.

I mean BioNTech, CureVac and Janssen / J&J vaccine are all EU based R&D.

The issue has been scaling up manufacturing capacity and maintaining domestic EU supply volumes, not any lack of technology.

It’s far from a perfect rollout but we need to be putting resources in, not turning into a bunch of countries shooting ourselves in the feet.

I saw some journalists in Europe say they were baffled by this move and wondering if it was just a cynical PR stunt. Apparently, Austria for example has been very slow at rolling out its own vaccines, so what on earth they were doing going to Israel looking for extra doses is anyone's guess.

1wizards sleeve · 13-03-2021 01:57PM

Strazdas wrote: »

I believe the only place they are supplying in big quantities is the US. Their numbers for the EU are much smaller and will continue to be - they will be one of the least used EU vaccines.

The way things are heading, it looks like Pfizer and J & J will be the big two in Europe this year.

They should be looking at covanix from India. A country well prepared for making vaccines IMO

Strazdas · 13-03-2021 02:05PM

1wizards sleeve wrote: »

They should be looking at covanix from India. A country well prepared for making vaccines IMO

Well there is also talk of CureVac and possibly Novavax being authorised in Europe soon, so by mid summer the situation should be radically different.

At the moment, it resembles the severe PPE shortage issues we were seeing this time last year, but eventually that all settled down.

Melanchthon · 13-03-2021 02:06PM

McGiver wrote: »

Nonsense. Evidence please.

Here McGiver you assured us that the Novaxax deal was going to be signed any day now back in January and it was basically done, with a 100 million doses already agreed too and they were just arguing over the other 100 million.
It's now close to mid March and there is nothing on the Novaxax site about even a preliminary agreement to supply that 100 million doses.
You wouldn't just have being blindly pro-EU???

quote="Strazdas;116568650"]Well there is also talk of CureVac and possibly Novavax being authorised in Europe soon, so by mid summer the situation should be radically different.[/quote]

They haven't even placed that order yet and Novavax have 110 million doses already ordered to places without current internal production capacity

astrofool · 13-03-2021 02:09PM

Melanchthon wrote: »

Here McGiver you assured us that the Novaxax deal was going to be signed any day now back in January and it was basically done, with a 100 million doses already agreed too and they were just arguing over the other 100 million.
It's now close to mid March and there is nothing on the Novaxax site about even a preliminary agreement to supply that 100 million doses.
You wouldn't just have being blindly pro-EU???

It seems a deal has been done there, but not announced (for whatever reason). The health professionals seem to have it factored into the rollout.

Strazdas · 13-03-2021 02:15PM

Melanchthon wrote: »

They haven't even placed that order yet and Novavax have 110 million doses already ordered to places without current internal production capacity

I'm not sure where we are with Novavax and what the issue is, but they (EU) seem confident that CureVac will be authorised very soon.

brickster69 · 13-03-2021 02:16PM

Strange how the 2 countries who are rolling out the vaccines best are the 2 who put most money into the R&D of these vaccines, finalized contracts first and relied on it's own manufacturing supply to roll it out.

Why don't Pfizer license out to other countries to produce and they would not of exported ?

Melanchthon · 13-03-2021 02:54PM

astrofool wrote: »

It seems a deal has been done there, but not announced (for whatever reason). The health professionals seem to have it factored into the rollout.

That's very very weird though, Novaxax is a publicly traded company announcing deals is important. We have all those articles in January and then radio silence since.
We do not have an agreement in principle announced which would make silence since more explanable.
For example here is Novaxax announcing their agreement in principle with Switzerland

https://ir.novavax.com/news-releases/news-release-details/novavax-and-government-switzerland-announce-agreement-principle

Wolf359f · 13-03-2021 02:55PM

brickster69 wrote: »

Strange how the 2 countries who are rolling out the vaccines best are the 2 who put most money into the R&D of these vaccines, finalized contracts first and relied on it's own manufacturing supply to roll it out.

Why don't Pfizer license out to other countries to produce and they would not of exported ?

In the case of the UK of the ~24 mil doses given, approx 10mil were produced in the UK, the rest came from the EU. So they relied and rely heavily on foreign supply. Even more so with 10mil doses coming from India.

tom1ie · 13-03-2021 02:58PM

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

Nationalism is a problem here but possibly a bigger one is nationalisation. The UK and USA have effectively nationalised the production of vaccines within their borders and prevented them from being exported, for their own benefit but to the detriment of the rest of the world. I'm not sure doing the same was really possible for the EU (given it is not a nation) and it likely would have had all sorts of negative consequences.

Certainly if the EU had followed a similar approach, there would be at least 35m less doses (that figure was in a tweet during the week but not sure when that was until and the figure could be a good bit higher today) in several other countries, including those currently preventing export from their own country. Really, the EU approach is a fairer one and for future pandemics, very few countries will have the option of following the UK/US strategy this time. Only relatively few countries have the resources to produce vaccines within their borders and for most that do, they come from large multinational corporations over which the local government has limited control. Going forward nationalisation should be avoided, particularly as next time China might control the only

Bear in mind that most of the doses given in the UK have been imported, including all their Pfizer and several million AZ doses which came from EU manufacturing sites. Their success has been based on keeping what gets made in their country but taking what gets made in other countries. This by definition can't work on a larger scale. If everyone took the same approach, most countries would be left waiting for others to send something their way, including the UK.

But how are the USA/ UK getting away with this?

L1011 · 13-03-2021 03:02PM

brickster69 wrote: »

Strange how the 2 countries who are rolling out the vaccines best are the 2 who put most money into the R&D of these vaccines, finalized contracts first and relied on it's own manufacturing supply to roll it out.

Why don't Pfizer license out to other countries to produce and they would not of exported ?

The UK is not relying on its own manufacturing - most of the AZ vaccines being given there are Belgian manufactured.

Wolf359f · 13-03-2021 03:04PM

tom1ie wrote: »

But how are the USA/ UK getting away with this?

The US can get away with it as they are completely self sufficient in the entire vaccine chain and they don't rely on any other countries for their supply chain.

The UK rely on the EU for Pfizer. I assume they are self sufficient in AZ.

Interestingly if the EU followed the same approach we'd be at an EU average of 22% jabbed (about double) and the UK would be at less than 14% (about 40%)
But plenty of countries would be still at 0% (countries outside of the EU and US who have only approved Pfizer)

fly_agaric · 13-03-2021 03:06PM

JTMan wrote: »

-Concern is now growing that the British-Swedish company might also fail to deliver the 180m doses it had initially promised the EU for the second quarter of the year, half of which are due to come from outside the bloc.

Given how important + fairly scarce globally these vaccines are right now, I'm not surprised (there is concern).

I really struggled to believe that the company was going to obtain an extra 90 million doses from somewhere that is not the EU or UK (afair that was where contract said the EUs vaccine would be produced).

"Magicland" must also be quite happy exporting enough Covid-19 vaccine in a pinch to fully dose adult population of a mid sized country. Some going!

I think the govt. here should be reducing any "expected" figures for no. of doses of this vaccine by at least 2/3 when drawing up plans [if they are not doing so already?]

What exactly is happening with AstraZeneca?

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