COVID-19: Vaccine and testing procedures Megathread Part 3 - Read OP

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

Mostly through the huge capacity coming in stream with BioNTech who’ve basically both purchased their own facility from Novartis (750m dose capacity), the existing Pfizer capacity being enhanced and they’ve also assembled a consortium of Sanofi & 12 other companies including Novartis to increase capacity.

There’s more capacity coming on stream for Moderna via Lonza who manufactures for them.

Then you’ve Janssen / J&J which is a viral vector vaccine developed by Janssen in Belgium and they’re a far bigger operation than AstraZeneca.

Novavax is also due to arrive soon and you’ve a 3rd mRNA vaccine from CureVac, a second German biotech company who are tied up with Bayer for manufacturing.

What’s going on in the background at the moment is primarily a huge ramping up of the BioNTech/ Pfizer vaccine production capacity and that’s being done both by Pfizer which is a huge operation itself and a consortium of other companies bringing in capacity too.

A lot of this has been pot luck with which vaccines hit the market first & what capacity is there.

AstraZeneca’s bumps in supply aren’t helping at all.

Well that's told me! 😄 Thank you for such a comprehensive answer.

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

EU based research has delivered the BioNTech vaccine, the CureVac vaccine and the Janssen vaccine.

There are multinational efforts involved in production but that’s just the reality of pharma and biopharma. All of them are multinationals.

If AstraZeneca’s acting primarily for the U.K. it’s surprising. It’s also a multinational with facilities in Europe and the USA and globally. It’s also a very international board and a French CEO. The company itself is also a product of a merger between Astra in Sweden & Zeneca which was the ICI pharmaceutical unit.

For a company like that to act in a nationalistic manner makes little sense to me.

That you imagine it is working in a nationalistic manner is strictly on you.

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

And that you chose to read my post that way is strictly on you.

My point is that it seems absurd that they could be acting in such way. I’m not the one making that suggestion.

It looks to me more like they bit off a lot more than they can chew and in reality can’t meet an order the scale of the EU’s.

They need to be more transparent about what’s going on though. What’s driven all this has been the last minute announcements of short supplies that have happened several times now.

Fair enough points.

The EU could at most be ~40M further ahead than they are now, this would mean no vaccinations in Israel, and UK on about half their current vaccination rate, Canada would not even have started.

It does look like now the EU will start curbing those exports, I'm not sure that's the right approach, even if it means watching the UK crow about itself, it's all about getting the world vaccinated, and the EU exporting early, allows that to happen faster (especially for the most vulnerable).

As for Van-Tam today, I think everybody knows that any medicine can have side effects. However, for vaccines, you are generally giving them to otherwise healthy people, and in the younger age groups, want them to take the vaccine to protect someone other than themselves (vs. a small % chance of them having complications due to the disease), in those cases you want to be absolutely sure that there are no serious side effects, because if one is found, the entire vaccine rollout and getting to herd immunity is at risk. In the case of AZ there was a severe incident, followed by less severe incidents, that very likely had nothing to do with the vaccine, but it's better for the analysis to take place and verify that is the case. The advantage is that we can get the vaccine into the arms of many more people. Those crying out for vaccines to resume are those who will get the vaccine anyway, the absolute safety of vaccines with having no severe side effects must be assured for society to be properly protected.

VDL getting tough today.

https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1372272776778776578

brickster69 wrote: »

Allowing a few extra months of sausage rolls on the shelves of Northern Ireland supermarkets is a serious breach of trust and law, but blocking the export of vaccines paid for by others in good faith is absolutely fine though.

I'd assume international law trumps a legal contract.
The legal contract in question is between a non EU country and a non EU company, so doesn't really impact the EU.

Would Ireland support an export ban that denies NI citizens vaccines from Europe ?

A bit pathetic really, especially when Pfizer and other makers rely on material from countries that would be blocked. Probably never thought about that yet.

brickster69 wrote: »

A bit pathetic really, especially when Pfizer and other makers rely on material from countries that would be blocked. Probably never thought about that yet.

UK doing the same and getting it's supply of materials. Nice to see the hypocrisy in full flow this evening.

Anyone know when the 70s are expected to be finished now?

Was on the absolute lash today, I drank 3 litres of water and 2 cans of Diet Coke (I’m fuçking mental) anyway some excellent news on the moderna vaccine below!!

https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/1372305758113644545?s=21

Melanchthon wrote: »

It's also a pretty optimistic answer. The EU doesn't have a contract with Novaxax (and yes I know talks happen but publicly traded companies don't tend to keep massively beneficial for their company orders quiet).

Pure speculation here on my part... I have been wondering what has been delaying the finalising of that contract.
Could the threat to block vaccines be as much about Novavax as Pfizer? Blocking Pfizer is tricky as the UK needs second doses. Also the EU doesn't want to annoy it's biggest supplier.
Novavax has UK plants and EU based plants. Could the UK a contract saying they can get supplies from the EU plants but won't export any, just like with AZ? Maybe the EU are balling hardball with Novavax trying to get early supplies as their is no point signing a contract for Q3 and threatening to block exports if they don't agree.

I just don't understand why UVL is threatening to block supplies of Pfizer now - what has changed recently? Is it the AZ supply reduction or is something else at play?

astrofool wrote: »

Pure speculation on my part as well, but it can't be a coincidence that vaccine supplies for the UK slow down on the same day the EU say they are looking at restricting exports. They've probably been watching a significant amount of AZ vaccine supply from Europe go to the UK since the close tracking started, and are taking steps against it (if the numbers are correct, 75% of the UK rollout has been EU produced supply). Cummings coming out and sticking the boot into the NHS today doesn't help either.

Why would Italy have blocked 250k doses going to Australia yet allow, I'm guessing alot more go to the UK?

eoinbn wrote: »

I don't think any AZ has moved from Europe since January. However it is believed that the Halix plant in the Netherlands was supplying the UK in December and maybe up until January. It takes 6 weeks to fill and finish. What we could be seeing in the UK is that some of their supply over the last 6 weeks was vaccine created in Halix, in January, but shipped to the UK for F&F. They would now be nearly out of the that supply.
It would explain why AZ didn't asked for that plant to be approved by the EMA back in January. It might have been a key part of the UK supply chain.
Then again maybe they just had a few bad batches...

I think is an interesting hypothesis, could it be EU trying to up the ante to gett them to submit relevant data to help approve Halix factory faster? Pure speculation on my part of course.