AstraZeneca glitch The EU is fuming at an AstraZeneca production glitch that will lead to lower supplies of its vaccine in the first half of the year. The failure comes after Pfizer and BioNTech also had to temporarily cut their vaccine shipments, due to the need to retool a Belgian plant so it could scale up production. Australia will also suffer from the AstraZeneca failure, though local production of that vaccine will soon come online. Politico
Merck has just folded their research of 2 vaccines because of weak results. I don't see why they couldn't license a vaccine from someone else and make that? After all they have the factory probably ready to go. Demand is way bigger than all of the vaccines already online and coming in soon.
Their vaccine is just comprised of spike protein wrapped up in a chimp virus, nothing really new and its effective rate is not even that high. I would worry more if it's Pfizer or moderna vaccines meet a production glitch but AstraZeneca? Besides easy storage, it doesn't offer much. You get the same side-effects but low effective rate of just 70% and no protection against the mutated variants. Couldn't care less if they can't produce more.
Money and profits can be divided between the 2 companies. The license fee alone could be a couple of billion bucks. Not to mention the PR value for both companies. Oh yes, and dead people don't buy drugs. It is in their best interest not to let the population decrease.
AstraZeneca vaccine And there's good news too about AstraZeneca's (less effective) vaccine. Still-under-review research seems to show that the first dose of the two-jab vaccine provides 76% protection for at least three months, which would vindicate the U.K.'s decision to space out the shots way longer than the manufacturer recommends. But there's more: it could be that the vaccine cuts transmission by 2/3, which is an effect everyone wants to see. Guardian