The Corona Pandemic

Away End - General Chat
3716

I’m not arguing with those facts. I just dont think it’s 100% right to state that the EU have relied on delivery. I bet they have, in the same way you’d rely on a builder that you’ve secured to do some work will arrive in 2 weeks time and we all know how that goes.

All I’m saying is that I bet AZ made some verbal assurances when the contract was set up but I will concede that they are not contractually binding. That then comes back to my point of people not talking to each other and @Arminius is right that these contracts should be some of the closest managed contracts ever seen. But the reality seems very different.

I’m not excusing the EU in this but there shouldn’t be surprises either.

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3717

I can sense the outrage and I cannot say it isn’t justified. What’s the mood music in Canada generally about all this?

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Basically the explanation was described back in November for the UK
https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/1136/default/

Its worth noting that in Europe there are a very limited number of 1000L GMP grade fermenters.

Chair: Graham asked about how many doses had been manufactured. The
day after your appointment, the Government announced that they had
signed an agreement with Oxford University and AstraZeneca to make up
to 30 million doses available by September for the UK. Has that been
accomplished?
Kate Bingham: No. Those 30 million doses assumed a linear yield on
scale-up. When you manufacture these vaccines, you start at test tube
level, scale up sequentially and ultimately get to the 1,000 or 2,000-litre
scale. The projections, made in good faith at the time, to get to 30 million
doses in September assumed that absolutely everything would work and
that there would be no hiccups at all in going from microlitre scales to
1,000 or 2,000-litre scales.
It has not gone lineally, and that is not through lack of care and attention,
availability of equipment or anything like that. It is just that it normally
takes a very long time. The answer is no, but it is now at the 1,000-litre
scale, and that is working. I am quite sure that we have the process, but
we are growing live cells and it is not a straightforward activity. The skills
in the UK in advanced manufacturing are world-class. It is challenging.
Q289 Chair: To update that figure, it was thought appropriate in May to make
an assessment of what we would have available on the stocks, as it were,
in September, for the purpose of reassuring people that as soon as a
vaccine was licensed and approved it could be deployed at scale. As of now
or, if you want to forecast, perhaps six weeks ahead, how many doses of
the Oxford AZ vaccine will be available in the UK?
Kate Bingham: As of now, we have low numbers of million doses in bulk
drug substance, not vialled, and the third batch of 1,000-litre
manufacturing is now under way. That should probably get us up to about
4 million doses at the end of the year.
Q290 Chair: Four million by the end of the year.
Kate Bingham: Yes. It then increases. Having got to that scale, you can
then run it quickly, but the challenge is to get to the 1,000-litre scale.
Q291 Chair: The point of the communication of the 30 million was to convey the
idea that we were getting ahead of the curve and anticipating the need for
a mass vaccination programme as soon as a vaccine was approved. That
was done in advance of many of the trials we have been hearing about,
but if there is a prospect of having low numbers of millions, it will not be
available for mass deployment the moment that, as we hope, we get
approval, will it?
Kate Bingham: There are various things. We have to look at the data; it
has to go through the regulators and then it has to start to be deployed.
The earliest possible time to look at the data will be late November to
December. Then it still has to go through the regulatory period, so my
expectation is that we will have more vaccine than we will be able to deploy
because that will take some time. Vaccinating millions of adults in this
pandemic will be a heroic achievement. It has not been done at this scale
before. I do not think that vaccine supply will be the greatest limiting
factor.
Q292 Chair: No one does that. When do you hope to see the first deployment of
vaccines to the public?
Kate Bingham: Deployment is a Health-led activity. If I put on my rosetinted specs, I would hope to see positive interim data from both Oxford
and Pfizer BioNTech in early December. If we get that, there is a possibility
of deployment by year end. If not, we will have to continue running the
studies, as Andy described earlier, until we get efficacy data that is
acceptable to the regulators, and then you can start deploying early next
year.
Q293 Chair: Let’s take the rose-tinted view that we might have it available for
deployment by the year end. By the year end, how many doses of vaccine
will we have in stock?
Kate Bingham: We will have low single-digit doses for Oxford and up to
10 million doses of the Pfizer BioNTech.
Chair: By that date? At the end of the year. Thank you

The key things are its difficult to do, lots of unknowns, best intentions, lots of variability, and done in batches.

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3719

It is not really outrage. After all, the US is the other possible source for vaccinations, and they are exporting to absolutely no one. But the howls of outrage from the EU are not exactly resonating well, the ‘butcher’s shop’ comment in particular - pretty clearly she does not think the ‘first come, first serve’ of a butcher shop should apply, but rather the more elegant process of a Michelin-starred restaurant that has a waiting list of months…except for the right people.

The Federal Government is under intensifying pressure, much of that self-inflicted, as they piled pressure on the Provinces when those governments struggled to get distribution ramped up, yet did not provide any sort of delivery schedule, then when pressed turned out to overpromise even before Pfizer pulled the rug out. Moderna is also struggling with deliveries, their yields are not scaling up as quickly they had hoped. A Toronto vaccination site set up to work at industrial scale was operational for one day.

My guess is that Trudeau ends up getting knifed by his own party over this, just a question of whether it is before or after an election. Another project to build out manufacturing capacity was a disaster of government execution - they won’t be producing before 2022. The litany of poor performance and above all a woeful lack of transparency is becoming a millstone, and it is becoming obvious that the reaffirmed commitment to have vaccines available to the entire population in the summer is unlikely.

All that said, for the circumstances, the strategy has not been that poor. Building a broad portfolio is probably the best strategy that a middle power without usefully close ties to any of the major manufacturing powers could have chosen (although that is a brutal truth to realize for many when thinking about the US and other NATO allies). The fundamental error seems to be the similar to the one the EU is doubling down - building up expectations. We also committed a lesser version of the same error the EU has made, trading time for price. At a basic level, for rich countries, that is irresponsible and immoral. The capital for expanding production capacity has to come from somewhere, and the WHO’s exhortations to think about global equity build precisely zero factories. Profits from the early movers have to fund the movement down the cost curve.

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3720

Schedules are usually closely monitored but at times working in small molecule pharma and we’ve had hugh slow downs in production as a result of starting materials very unexpectantly not arriving,in fact we’ve had one only this past week(lasted for a week to 10 days).I was thinking it was transport delays as a result of brexit.

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3721

Ironically, one of the critical precursors for Pfizer in Belgium comes from the UK, so far they have not stated that as a problem.

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You would hope they’d have seen potential logistical problems in advance and made arrangements to ensure no impact on production as a result.That (getting materials in)should be the easiest part of the process.

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3723

Damn, UK reporting that they have discovered a mutation from the B117 variant that has also evolved the E484K mutation (increased antibody evasion → reduced vaccine efficacy). So one step away from replicating the Brazil and SA variant.

Ontario is increasing sequencing and calculating per variant R. For the original variants, it is well below 1, for B117 it is above - right now the province in total is below 1, so the B117 should be the dominant version by the end of February.

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Thanks for this. I’m always amazed at the intelligence of life. We create a vaccine in order to continue our normal lives? The virus does what viruses do, he mutates and makes it more difficult for us.

Of course, there will be new vaccines developed to improve their efficiency on this and other particular strains, and of course, the virus will mutate further.

3726

So, I’ve just read a comment that says the initial data coming from the AZ vaccine is that it is showing to be more effective when the doses are spread out by 11-12 weeks than when separated by 3 weeks as initially recommended. This supposedly wasn’t able to be shown before due to the time constraints of the initial trials.

It was a tweet from someone with no discernible expertise in this area which is why I haven’t posted it. Anyone know if this has been reported by anyone reliable?

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3730

Data out on the Russian vaccine, and it is a useful contender.

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3731

Thank you - I felt like I was spamming this thread!

Quite happy to have this one. My only hope would be that I’m not activated too early, I’d like to see my kids go through school.

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3732

Just work on your Magnum, you’ll be fine.

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At first glance it appears to be a slightly sexist vaccine :grimacing: :wink:

3734

Blyat, what do you want?

It is Russian, after all.

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3735

What chances the Russians ban the export of their vaccine to the UK due to our Magnitsky sanctions?

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