Talk Quesada forum

The "between the lines" reading of the AstraZeneca shoddy dealings with supply to the EU doesn't reflect very well on the company. Where has the vaccine which was meant for the EU countries gone? Hopefully the EU President will keep up the pressure and out the truth from AstraZeneca. They have really dashed the hopes of a lot of citizens hoping for a bit of normality

https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/202 ... 9-vaccine/

Bee

Bee wrote:The "between the lines" reading of the AstraZeneca shoddy dealings with supply to the EU doesn't reflect very well on the company. Where has the vaccine which was meant for the EU countries gone? Hopefully the EU President will keep up the pressure and out the truth from AstraZeneca. They have really dashed the hopes of a lot of citizens hoping for a bit of normality

https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/202 ... 9-vaccine/

Bee

Maybe it’s a case of the EU getting bogged down with their bureaucracy & being slow in getting the vaccine approved.

Graham Stovold wrote:Maybe it’s a case of the EU getting bogged down with their bureaucracy & being slow in getting the vaccine approved.

Could be some truth in that. The vaccine is being produced and AstraZenica can’t be expected to stockpile the stuff in expensive warehousing whist a potential customer dithers over its purchase. There are plenty of County’s crying out for it

The EMA (European Medicines Agency) received a request from AstraZeneca for marketing approval of the vaccine on the 12th Jan. That's just 2 weeks ago so you could hardly call it "bogged down". The EMA has been working very closely with AstraZeneca in reviewing all the data from their trials of the vaccine as it became available. The UK gave the vaccine a temporary licence for emergency medicine use on 30th Dec. That is a very different approval to Marketing Approval which is what the EMA will be issuing hopefully by week's end.

I hope all the supply issues for EU supply can be ironed out as it is in all our interests.

Bee

Hi Bee can I ask what is the difference between the U.K. approval and the EU marketing approval? Seems to me the important thing is to get as many people as possible vaccinated as quickly as possible

The UK ordered their vaccine 3 months before the the EU .

Facts re the dates and pricing of the vaccine that may be helpful are that, the bloc agreed to purchase 300 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine for €750m, with an option for an additional 100 million in August last year and that Britain secured 100 million doses in May 2020, costing £84m.

Interesting, hopefully also helpful, quotes (Sky News) from AstraZeneca's chief executive Mr. Soirot when he said that his company's global capacity is about 100 million vaccine doses a month, adding that most vaccines have a capacity of 100 million doses a year.
- "Of course, we are ramping up production and Europe is getting 17% of this global production in February for a population that is 5% of the world population...We are in the ramp-up phase and basically it will improve, but it takes time."
- "the sites that have the lowest productivity in the network are the sites that are supplying Europe and quite honestly, I mean, we're not doing it on purpose.
- "You know, we do this at no profit, remember? We didn't go into this to try and make money or whatever. We would like to treat Europe as good as possible. I actually do believe we treated Europe fairly."

In a separate interview with Die Welt, Soriot said the volumes agreed with the EU were not binding. "It's not a commitment we have to Europe, it's a best effort," he said.

See : AstraZeneca boss says UK could have vaccinated 30 million people against COVID by March (msn.com)

There was a chap on the radio (R5 I think) yesterday who said that the problem was with the 'fill & finish' stage of the process. I believe this is where you actually get the vaccine into the vials (but I may be wrong).

This process is carried out normally by a company in Belgium but it had been identified quite some time ago that they wouldn't have the capacity to deal with the amounts needed. Therefore the UK government had sourced a North Wales company to do this stage of the operation thereby taking some of the pressure off the Belgium plant and also I suppose meaning better access for the UK market.

Now I know all things are open to spin and ideally we would all love to have the whole world vaccinated immediately but the scale of production we are talking about here is absolutely phenomenal and certainly never attempted before. I think we all need to realise that there will be some hiccups and delays along the way. But I certainly do not think that the company is hiding, stockpiling or selling someone's orders to another bidder - there would just be no reason to do so.

ajkechadwick wrote:Hi Bee can I ask what is the difference between the U.K. approval and the EU marketing approval? Seems to me the important thing is to get as many people as possible vaccinated as quickly as possible

emergency approval means its use is intended for a public health emergency (e.g. a pandemic). For these medicines, less comprehensive pharmaceutical and non-clinical data may also be accepted.

The marketing approval requires much more data before it is given approval for distribution in the EU.

Bee

BennyTheDip wrote:There was a chap on the radio (R5 I think) yesterday who said that the problem was with the 'fill & finish' stage of the process. I believe this is where you actually get the vaccine into the vials (but I may be wrong).

This process is carried out normally by a company in Belgium but it had been identified quite some time ago that they wouldn't have the capacity to deal with the amounts needed. Therefore the UK government had sourced a North Wales company to do this stage of the operation thereby taking some of the pressure off the Belgium plant and also I suppose meaning better access for the UK market.

Now I know all things are open to spin and ideally we would all love to have the whole world vaccinated immediately but the scale of production we are talking about here is absolutely phenomenal and certainly never attempted before. I think we all need to realise that there will be some hiccups and delays along the way. But I certainly do not think that the company is hiding, stockpiling or selling someone's orders to another bidder - there would just be no reason to do so.