AstraZeneca is one of the shining stars of the pandemic. Not only did it produce a vaccine where other big players failed, the UK-Swedish company has pledged to sell it at cost until it is able to declare the pandemic over.
Because the vials that contain Astra’s vaccine can be kept in a normal refrigerator, it has managed to keep the cost down to about $3 (£2.20) a shot, compared with the $35 charged by US firm Moderna for its vaccine outside the States.
The low cost is one major benefit, but it is matched by the ease of transporting the vaccine, which puts it at the top of the list for use in developing countries.
As a result, there is almost limitless demand for the vaccine from across the globe. Astra has been attempting to ramp up production rapidly, but has hit problems. This has had some politicians near to frothing at the mouth.
Last week we had the Belgian MEP Philippe Lamberts accusing the company of “arrogance” and “dishonesty”. Then came the French foreign minister – speaking on national radio, as EU officials often have over recent months – as though Astra and the UK government were one and the same thing.
Jean-Yves Le Drian warned that the EU was prepared to block Astra vials at the EU border in order to catch up with the UK’s impressive vaccination programme. While the UK has enough vaccine to complete the first stage of the vaccination process, Le Drian said it would struggle to obtain and administer the required second doses unless EU countries were given greater access Astra’s production.
This is not the first threat to the UK that treats Astra as if it were a state-owned enterprise; it is just the latest in a series that EU officials hope will force Boris Johnson to buckle this weekend and agree to share more of the output.
A bargain of some kind is likely after the best efforts of the two UK sites that manufacture Astra’s vaccine failed to live up to expectations. It has proved difficult to scale up the plants in Keele, Staffordshire, and Oxford and marry their work with a plant in Wrexham that completes part of the process. Without the scale needed on British soil, the company has to rely more than it would like on imports to meet its UK contractual arrangements.
But in truth, all the pharmaceutical businesses making vaccines have struggled to ramp up production. They all have to piece together the manufacture of arm-ready vials across several sites, sometimes in different countries.
Some UK ministers believe EU officials have been spurred on by domestic pharma companies, angered by Astra’s pledge to sell the vaccine at cost. There is also a suspicion of spite behind the concerns over the efficacy of Astra’s vaccine.
US officials have poured scorn on the company for revising down by three percentage…
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