The Rise of Vaccine Nationalism

It started earlier this week with Italy seizing and blocking the shipment of a quarter million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine doses to Australia. Now other countries are following the example...

France could follow Italy and block vaccine shipments, health minister says
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/05/europe/france-vaccine-italy-astrazeneca-intl/index.html


Italy blocks quarter of a million Covid vaccines destined for Australia over European shortage
Rome blocks export due to ‘the continuing shortage of vaccines in the EU and in Italy’, foreign ministry confirms
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ralia-covid-vaccine-astrazeneca-b1812707.htmlhttps://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ralia-covid-vaccine-astrazeneca-b1812707.html

 

I think we all knew this was going to happen and I think it was the Trump administration that started it first with an "executive order" about the vaccines...

• America First.

Unfortunately, this will eventually create a black market to the highest bidder or to those with the most political power to get their vaccination even those that publicly do not believe in Covid-19 and / or do not believe in the merits of vaccination as a way out of this Pandemic while privately are scared shitless.

By the way, Trump and Melanie secretly were vaccinated back in January. That would then imply they got their 2nd shot in February...while in Florida.

They are old...I understand it. I'm just making fun of their initial its a "democratic hoax" campaign. Simply, now that they have lost the U.S. election...time to get vaccinated.

wrbtrader

 

Germany failed in COVID vaccine procurement because they relied on the EU to get them the doses. Now there is a rising chorus of voices demanding that Germany blaze its own trail in order to move forward in vaccinating the population...

Germany Fails the Fight Against the Coronavirus
Germany’s politicians are so scared of ever being accused of “nationalism” by other countries that they do not want to do anything that could create the appearance that Berlin is prioritizing the interests of its own population.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/germany-fails-fight-against-coronavirus-179290

In the first few months of the coronavirus pandemic, Germany was hailed around the world as an example for other countries to follow: the death rate was lower than in most comparable countries; there were no overcrowded intensive care units in Germany, as there were in New York, for example, and many other European countries, including Italy, the United Kingdom and France. However, the situation deteriorated in late 2020/early 2021 and the coronavirus death rate rose to over one thousand per day in January 2021.

The only positive aspect of the crisis right now is that even in the last few months of 2020 and early 2021, Germany’s intensive care units (ICUs) have not been overwhelmed. In any case, Germany has more ICU beds per capita than most comparable countries. But safeguarding the health system has come at a high price. Germany has been in a comprehensive lockdown since the beginning of November, and the current restrictions are expected to remain in force until at least the end of March. This means, for example, that restaurants and stores will have been closed for five months. Some larger restaurant and retail businesses have already gone bankrupt—and many more are on the verge of insolvency. German businesses are becoming increasingly desperate and angry.

Businesses have expressed dismay at what they see as the German government’s failures and litany of amateurish mistakes. The greatest failure of all relates to vaccine procurement. Despite the fact that one of the leading vaccines was developed in Germany by BioNTech (with the help of several hundred million euros of German taxpayers’ money), Germany’s vaccination rate remains stubbornly very low. As of early March, only 5.3 percent of the German population has received at least one vaccination and only 2.7 percent have been fully vaccinated. In contrast, the United States has administered at least a single vaccination dose to 15.5 percent of the population. The UK has managed to vaccinate more than 30 percent of its population, while Israel leads the way and has given first doses to almost 56 percent of its citizens (and fully vaccinated over 40 percent).

The reason vaccination rates are so low is because Germany decided to delegate vaccine procurement and distribution to the EU. And this decision, in turn, is based on German political paranoia. Germany’s politicians are so scared of ever being accused of “nationalism” by other countries that they do not want to do anything that could create the appearance that Germany is prioritizing the interests of its own population. Every day, German politicians are issuing new warnings against “Impfnationalismus” (vaccine nationalism).

On one of Germany’s leading political TV talk shows, Maischberger, the host asked the Christian Democratic Union of Germany politician and Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble about the vaccine.

“As a citizen, you have a right to expect your government, at a very minimum, to refuse to accept unavoidable deaths and do everything it can to prevent them . . . When it comes to vaccinations, is it not fair to say that the German government has failed to properly fulfill its duty of care to its citizens,” the host inquired. “After all, every vaccination that comes too late, every vaccination that is not administered, could mean that someone dies and that is entirely unnecessary, as we can see if we look at the other countries around us.”

“It is of no use if we defeat the virus in Germany, or however you want to put it,” Schäuble replied. “That’s why the approach to procure the vaccines on a European level was the right way to go, even if it is a bit more complicated. You have to pay the price if you want to strengthen Europe. Europe is a bit more complicated, it has to be said.”

The phrase, “You have to pay the price if you want to strengthen Europe” not only gets to the heart of Schäuble’s politics, it also perfectly encapsulates the attitude of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

In particular, Germany is being prevented from effectively combating coronavirus by a symbiosis of ideology and bureaucracy. Take the Corona Warn App for instance. This piece of smartphone software was developed in Germany to tell people when they had spent time in close proximity to an infected person. Merkel’s Chancellery Minister Helge Braun praised it as the best coronavirus app in the world, but in the fight against the virus, it has proved to be completely useless. One of the reasons for the app’s total failure is that Germany prioritizes data protection to such an extent that it takes precedence over protecting human life and the economic existence of tens of thousands of businesses and self-employed Germans.

(More at above url)

 

Wow. Having the german army run it looks good to me now and I was totally opposed to it.

Holy Shiite. They went totally off the rails. There were several different ways to go which could be debated- and we did- but they went off and found the worst possible way to go and said "Let's have the EU, do it. What could go wrong there." Hundreds of years of german efficiency and genetic predisposition toward making the trains run on time and they handed it over to the EU. heh, cannot make this shiite up. Someone had a big, big, big bowl of stupid for breakfast when they came up with that idea.

 

Germany prepared for vaccine distribution and administration with "Teutonic Efficiency". They created mass vaccination centers in every region & staffed them, placed cold storage refrigerators in nearly every doctor's office, pharmacy & medical location, arranged for the military to distribute vaccine doses with schedules for planes & trucks already arranged down to the minute, and many other preparation measures -- expecting a kick-off date in late December.

Unfortunately they relied on the EU to provide the vaccine doses and no doses arrived -- turning the entire well prepared effort into a fiasco.

Germany should have led the world at handling the pandemic. But experts slam Merkel's vaccine response as a disaster
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/07/europe/germany-vaccine-disaster-grm-intl/index.html

The fridges are here but the shots are not.

Doctor Sibylle Katzenstein spent thousands kitting out her Berlin practice so she could administer Covid-19 vaccines as fast as possible, but she is yet to receive a single dose.

"It would have been nice if I had at least 10 vaccines in my fridge. It cost me a lot of time and frustration and in the end these people who need it, they didn't get vaccinated," Katzenstein said.

The general practitioner says she has no idea how to get her vulnerable patients vaccinated after repeatedly lobbying for shots and repeatedly being turned down. "I am very concerned and I don't know who to turn to."

She voices the concerns of many -- that Germany's vaccination rollout is a bureaucratic nightmare with deadly consequences.

The country was applauded for its initial handling of the pandemic, thanks to widescale testing and its fast response to the outbreak. Despite a high number of reported cases, Germany's Covid-19 mortality rate remains low.

But since it administered its first shot in December, Germany has only vaccinated around 6% of the population, with around 5 million first doses and 3 million second doses administered.

Part of the problem is that Germany has only been offering shots at specific vaccine centers and not at doctors' offices -- unlike in the United Kingdom, where local doctors have been vaccinating people for months, and where more than 30% of the population has received a first dose.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has admitted to failings with the speed of the vaccine rollout and said Wednesday that doctors' offices should be able to vaccinate patients by the end of March.

Katzenstein notes there are around 50,000 general practitioners' offices in Germany and "it's a lot easier for patients to reach their own doctor."

The system for patients to book a vaccination slot at a center is complex, with numerous different processes in the country's 16 states. Katzenstein argues it's tricky for a 90-year-old to navigate the online system.

"I think we have a social obligation as a whole society being in lockdown. We need to do everything which is quick, pragmatic."

Germany has been in varying degrees of lockdown since November and this week restrictions were extended again until the end of March.

But internal logistics and bureaucracy are only part of the issue.

Factors at play

At the start of the pandemic last year, everything was in place for Merkel to handle it with success.

Germany -- a country with a global reputation for efficiency -- held the EU Council Presidency and in Ursula von der Leyen, a former German defense minister, it had an ally at the top of the European Commission.

When it came time to secure vaccines, Merkel insisted that the EU should focus on procuring shots as a bloc instead of Germany and other member states going it alone. But the EU's rollout has been slow and plagued by delays.

"Germany is the architect of the European failure because Germany and Merkel were behind pushing for the European process that was a failure from the beginning," Julian Reichelt, the managing editor of Germany's largest selling tabloid newspaper Bild, told CNN.

"She wanted to make it all about Europe and her being a great European," he says.

Last month the newspaper made headlines in the UK when it ran the front page headline: 'Liebe Briten, we beneiden you!' [Dear Britain, we envy you] in a pointed message on how Germany was floundering with its vaccine rollout in comparison to Britain's strategy, which has been widely hailed as a success.

The comparisons to Britain have become even more painful this week as Merkel announced a U-turn on the decision not to authorize the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for people over the age of 65.

The original age cap decision, announced on January 28 by Germany's vaccination committee (STIKO), was made citing a lack of sufficient data for older age groups in trials. Critics said it harmed public trust in the AstraZeneca shot in a country that suffers from a relatively high level of vaccine skepticism, and set off a domino effect across Europe.

The day after, French President Emmanuel Macron described the AstraZeneca vaccine as "quasi-ineffective" in older people, saying "the first results are not encouraging for those over 60-65 years old." The claim was disputed by multiple scientists, and real-world data has since shown that the AstraZeneca vaccine is highly effective at preventing hospitalization in older populations.

The likes of France, Spain, Italy and the Nordic nations followed suit, limiting authorization of the vaccine to younger segments of the population. They are also now performing U-turns on their decisions.

The damage is done

The decision by STIKO to initially bar the use of AstraZeneca shots in older populations "really was a mistake" because it resulted in "everyone in Germany" losing confidence in the vaccine, said Dr. Uwe Janssens, head of the German Interdisciplinary Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (DIVI).

Janssens understands why STIKO came to its initial conclusion, and said that if the call had gone the other way, there would have been criticism of that decision too. Either way, he said, "we didn't have enough vaccine from the beginning because of the consequences of the shopping tour from the European Union, because they didn't buy enough."

Tobias Kurth, a professor of public health and epidemiology and the director of the Institute of Public Health at the Charité university hospital in Berlin, described the German regulator's original decision as a "communications disaster."
A day after STIKO imposed an age cap on the AstraZeneca vaccine, the European Medicines Agency approved it for everyone over the age of 18. The World Health Organization followed suit on February 8.
"They have now corrected their recommendation finally, but now the disaster has already happened," Kurth told CNN. "People say they don't want to have the AstraZeneca stuff because it is really bad," and there's no way to correct them because "you can't get it out of people's heads."

Last month a spokesman for Merkel took the extraordinary step of tweeting that the "AstraZeneca [vaccine] is both safe and highly effective," following reports that Germans were turning it down.

There are currently around 1.3 million doses of the AstraZeneca sitting unused in storage in Germany, partly due to the fact elderly populations until now have not been allowed to take it. Some Germans also see the AstraZeneca vaccine as a lower quality shot, because of its slightly lower efficacy rates compared to other authorized vaccines.

CNN has contacted the German Ministry of Health for comment.

'Complaining about a candy'

Those running a vaccination center at Berlin Brandenburg airport, which administers both the Pfizer-BioNTech and the AstraZeneca vaccine, say early on barely anyone wanted AstraZeneca, but that is now changing.

"My impression and what the numbers tell us is that the acceptance of the AstraZeneca vaccine is rising. We can see that with the bookings. It started very slowly, but as of yesterday evening 80% of the available appointments have been taken," Christian Wehry, a spokesperson for the Association of Health Insurance Physicians Brandenburg said.

"I think people in Germany are just too spoiled. It reminds me of children playing on a playground, complaining about a candy, thinking they deserve another candy because someone tells them it's better," Thomas Buchhammer, a medical doctor, told CNN after he received his first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Thursday at the vaccination site.

STIKO changed course and approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for over-65s, citing new data, on Thursday. It said in a statement that its previous recommendation on January 28 "was completely correct based on the data available at that time."

Meanwhile, Merkel -- speaking ahead of the STIKO statement -- announced Wednesday that the interval between administering first and second doses of Covid-19 vaccines would be stretched "to its maximum" in order to "vaccinate more people faster for the first vaccination."

The Chancellor said there would now be a 42-day gap for the second Pfizer shot and a 12-week one for the second shot of Oxford/AstraZeneca -- a move that is more in line with the UK's policy of administering second doses of both AstraZeneca and Pfizer towards the end of a 12-week gap.

The changes to Germany's dosing strategy came after real world data from studies appeared to vindicate the British strategy of vaccinating as many high-risk people as possible with the first dose.

The UK has vaccinated more than 21 million people with a first dose and around 1 million have received a second dose.

German Social Democratic politician and health expert Karl Lauterbach says Germany made a mistake with its initial AstraZeneca decision but even if the age cap hadn't been implemented, the UK still has better vaccination capabilities.

"Even if it wasn't for the AstraZeneca vaccination not being taken up, we would still not be able to vaccinate much more people because we are lacking in vaccines," Lauterbach said. "Basically the EU Commission was not strict enough, not fast enough and not providing enough money for making more vaccinations available in a shorter period of time."

The European Union, which was slower to authorize vaccines for use than the UK, waged a war of words with AstraZeneca over delays in supply in late January. On Thursday, Italy announced it had imposed an export ban on 250,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses destined for Australia, citing supply delays and a continuing shortage of vaccines in the EU and in Italy.

Lauterbach concedes the EU's "procurement of the vaccine was slow. Price considerations were overwhelming. Capacity was not given the attention it should have been given. So we lost time and we are suffering from a shortage of all the major vaccines."

Much has been said about the EU's vaccine failure, with the Commission President von der Leyen admitting herself at the beginning of February that Europe was late to authorize vaccines and too optimistic on mass production.

But Germany's internal decisions have also left it grappling to get up to speed.

"What was more important to Merkel, was that the EU should get its act together to show that the EU works. Not because of Brexit but because that's the way that Germany likes to do things," said Quentin Peel, an Associate Fellow for the Europe Programme at the Chatham House think tank in London.

A recent survey commissioned by state broadcaster ARD revealed Thursday that 73% of Germans are not happy with how the government has dealt with the vaccine rollout.

Germany's Health Minister Jens Spahn, speaking at a press conference on Friday, said that the country will speed up "in the next few weeks." He forecast that in April there will be more vaccines available than people who can be vaccinated at vaccination centers. He added that mobile vaccination teams would be introduced to help with the effort and general practitioners should routinely be included in the drive.

Meanwhile, Dr. Lothar Wieler, the head of Germany's Robert Koch Institute (RKI), warned that "we are still seeing too many deaths" and that the country's incidence rate is rising again. Wieler said a more contagious coronavirus variant first discovered in the UK has been detected in 40% of new infections after Merkel recently warned the country needs to "proceed wisely and carefully" to avoid a lockdown due to a third wave.

The real-life knock-on effect of a slow rollout is evident for 59-year-old Friederike Bettina Kolster, who has the neurological disease Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and is desperate to get a shot.
As a wheelchair user she has up to 15 people caring for her, increasing her risk of contracting the disease.

"Because I need medical care I can't protect myself," she said. "I am in home isolation all the time. I have no contacts outside to minimize the risk."

"Everyone thinks that I should be in the first group. But because my disease is not listed in the vaccination decree and I am under 60, I actually get counted as a healthy person under 60 initially."

Kolster describes Germany's rollout as "extremely frustrating" and says she lives in fear of the disease.

"I don't care which vaccine I get," she said. "As long as I am vaccinated."

 

After it is all said and done and they figure out the vaccine is not “The end all, be all” solution they thought it would be, what’s next? Covid mutates every six months or so, similar to influenza, and it takes us a year to develop a vaccine that has questionable effectiveness for the most vulnerable.

It would be a sweet symmetry of nature if Covid was created by AI to make a point of where mankind stands in the order of things. We have become like a 1930’s slapstick cartoon where the character becomes obsessed trying to get rid of a fly and totally destroys his house in his attempt that ultimately fails.

The saying “Pride goeth before the fall” comes to mind, but perhaps the word “Pride” should be substituted with “Vision” or “Intellect”.

What if a “Real virus”, like the one in 1918 were to hit us again? Effective extinction of the human race because of systemic collapse exposing our vulnerabilities to over specialization and or lack of systemic protections?

Covid is not just a disease, it is a symptom that something is seriously wrong with modern society.

 

As vaccine nationalism deepens, governments pay to bring production home
https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-vaccine-supply-insigh-idUSKBN2B40IX

In the German town of Dessau, one of the sites of the Bauhaus art school, an institute was set up in 1921 to mass-produce vaccines that later helped strengthen the German Democratic Republic. Exactly 100 years later, the site is gearing up to be a one-stop shop to produce COVID-19 vaccines for Germany’s pandemic response.

It’s just one example of a rash of efforts by governments across the globe to access fragmented vaccine production, after manufacturing setbacks deprived European Union members of drugs made on their own soil this year. From Australia to Thailand, states planning home-based vaccine plants are starting to reshape the industry.

The German venture has the backing of the regional government, as part of a national effort to secure supplies and add vaccines to Germany’s exports. Saxony-Anhalt premier Reiner Haseloff said he believes Germany could become a swing producer of vaccines, in the same way that power companies maintain capacity for times of strong demand.

“Ultimately, this is comparable to the energy industry, where the state also pays to keep power plants in reserve,” Haseloff told Reuters.

Unlike the United States, where the government’s Operation Warp Speed began funding the expansion and retrofit of pharmaceutical manufacturing sites early in the pandemic, few countries globally have the option to commandeer factories. The German plan is one of more than half a dozen by governments around the world to avert shortages by supporting drug companies’ local production.

Some - including Australia, Brazil, Japan and Thailand - are setting up manufacturing partnerships with Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca PLC. Elsewhere, Italy has pledged state backing for a public-private vaccine production centre, while Austria, Denmark and Israel plan a joint research and development fund and will explore whether to produce their own next-generation vaccines.

India plays a significant role in vaccine production globally, and the United States, Japan and Australia also plan to help finance vaccine production capacity there, a senior U.S. administration official told Reuters.

The moves aim to address a global shortage of doses. With vaccines key to restart economies, some countries have pre-purchase agreements to secure their supply.

2 BILLION DOSES
The vaccine crunch in Europe has shown that states that depend on deliveries from multinationals can be vulnerable. In January, AstraZeneca cut supplies to the bloc by more than half for the first and second quarters, and told Brussels it was not able to divert Belgian-made drugs that were earmarked for the United Kingdom. The cut heightened tensions between London and Brussels and prompted European leaders to set curbs on exports of vaccines made in the EU - starting this month, when Italy blocked exports of AstraZeneca’s shot.

Germany is a net importer of all vaccines, with a $720 million trade deficit in this area. Berlin plans to change that, and Germany’s former “Bacterial Institute of the Anhalt Counties” in Dessau will help. Now a family-owned firm called IDT Biologika, it and AstraZeneca plan to invest more than 100 million euros ($120 million) to expand the plant into a factory for complete vaccines.

The company says it aims to make between 30 million and 40 million doses a month from the end of 2022, producing the bulk vaccine and also dispensing it into vials, which Chief Executive Juergen Betzing told Reuters would make it one of Europe’s biggest manufacturers and add capacity for at least 360 million doses a year from within the EU.

Germany has not yet reserved the right to purchase any of these vaccines, but the government wants to come up with a plan on measures to support and incentivise long-term vaccine production capacity by May 1, according to a document seen by Reuters. A government source said drug company representatives have told Berlin long-term purchase guarantees would be more important to their investment decisions than aid.

The IDT plant will also be able to produce vaccines for other companies and, together with a cluster of firms in Saxony-Anhalt, form the heart of a government strategy to make Germany a new centre for vaccine production in Europe.

Berlin is targeting an annual capacity of 2 billion COVID vaccine doses from IDT and other facilities, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. For comparison, AstraZeneca has stated its ambitions to produce up to 3 billion doses of its vaccine by the end of this year, which would make it the largest COVID-19 vaccine producer globally.

Berlin’s target could prove to be far in excess of the EU’s needs for its 450 million people, but it isn’t yet clear how often vaccinations will be needed to bolster immunity.

The COVID pandemic is an unprecedented challenge to inoculate billions. While the drugs are badly needed in the near term, such piecemeal plans reflect the lack of any coherent global strategy to cover vaccination in a pandemic, which the world needs, according to Robert Van Exan, a consultant and former Sanofi executive.

“It takes time to build that infrastructure properly, and some thought has to go into it,” Van Exan said.

LESSONS LEARNED
Previous vaccine disputes between allies have served as a prelude to the COVID-era fight for supplies.

In a flu scare in 1976, the United States blocked vaccine exports, derailing a vaccination plan in Canada. Ottawa learned a lesson: During the H1N1 flu pandemic of 2009, it bought drugs from a local producer, and waited until its outbreak was largely over before then donating extra doses to the World Health Organization.

And then, in the years after the 2009 pandemic, Washington paid hundreds of millions to several companies to build or expand private facilities that could be used to make and package a pandemic vaccine on short notice within the country’s borders.

When COVID-19 hit, at least two of those sites became part of Operation Warp Speed, producing vaccines for Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Moderna Inc . Federal officials used the Defense Production Act to put participating companies first in line for supplies made by other U.S. companies, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers directly oversaw some construction projects. When companies struggled to hire enough qualified staff, 16 Department of Defense employees were sent to work in quality control at two manufacturing sites, according to a recent federal report.

RUBIK’S CUBE
Globally, vaccines are manufactured across drug firms’ existing networks and often need to pass through several countries - and even between continents - before they are ready to inject into arms. Within the EU alone, more than 30 plants from Sweden to Spain are involved in the production of COVID-19 vaccines. AstraZeneca says it has manufacturing capacity in 25 sites across 15 countries, in a chain of partnerships that one company executive likens to a Rubik’s Cube puzzle.

It’s a similar picture for others, including vaccines made by Russia and China, and hitches are common when trying to accelerate production across multiple sites and borders. Switzerland-based Lonza Group AG makes the ingredients for Moderna’s vaccine which then go to Spain to be put into vials. J&J’s shot is made in the Netherlands and sent to the United States for bottling. Pfizer-BioNTech has contracted factories across a network of 13 sites to meet production needs this year - their supplies to Europe also briefly fell short when a plant had to be re-engineered.

But friction between AstraZeneca and the EU in Brussels has continued to chafe since a supplier to the drugmaker in Seneffe, Belgium ran into difficulty in January.

AstraZeneca’s vaccine production starts with living cells being infected with a modified form of the virus. The cells are grown in tanks, or bioreactors, harvested and purified over about two months. Once the active ingredient is created, water and proteins are added and the liquid is bottled - a stage known as ‘fill and finish.’ Sometimes, different stages happen at different sites.

Problems at the Belgian plant, combined with AstraZeneca’s contractual commitments to supply the United Kingdom, meant that even though the product involved was made a short drive from Brussels, EU citizens were left wanting.

The German company IDT Biologika now plans to cover all stages of the cycle. Other German vaccine developers BioNTech SE and CureVac NV, which are at the forefront of new vaccine technology and have both received government funding, will also be part of Germany’s cluster. BioNTech recently brought a new German plant online to produce up to 750 million doses per year and pharma giant Bayer AG will help make CureVac’s shot.

The developers of the Russian vaccine, Sputnik V, have also made inquiries about producing it in the region, Saxony-Anhalt premier Haseloff said. Russia’s sovereign wealth fund Russia’s Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which is promoting Sputnik V internationally, declined to comment.

AstraZeneca’s arrangement with IDT is similar to other deals the company has reached, for instance in Japan and Australia. Arrangements like this also help reduce the risk for companies.

AstraZeneca declined to comment on the deals it has reached, but one of its executives has said in the past the company tried hard to create independent supply chains to enable full access to the vaccine around the world.

MAKING MONEY
Building up vaccine production capacity makes sense given the need to vaccinate the world, potentially repeatedly, against COVID-19, as well as the threat of future pandemics.

But large manufacturing sites are the most efficient and at some point, extra capacity spread across many countries may not be economical.

Prashant Yadav, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Center for Global Development, said the advantages of scale kick in once you can produce at least 100 million doses per year.

He believes four or five countries could likely scale up without raising costs, but if many build small operations, “I think we get to a point where everybody will end up paying a higher price.”

In Canada, the federal government is building a publicly-owned facility in Montreal that would make about 2 million vaccine doses per month beginning next year, leaving it well below that 100 million annual dose threshold.

Asked if the small size will raise costs, Canada’s National Research Council said it is not meant to compete with the private sector: “The objective of the facility is to respond quickly to future health emergencies.”

 

Germany no longer will be dependent on any other country for vaccines...

Germany seeks to be vaccine self-sufficient by next year
Germany and the European Union should massively increase their vaccination production capacities, Germany's vaccine commissioner says. His remarks come as the EU's inoculation drive has been hit by further setbacks.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-seeks-to-be-vaccine-self-sufficient-by-next-year/a-56862996

From 2022, Germany should be able to produce enough of its own vaccines to inoculate the whole population in the case of a pandemic, a top official said on Saturday.

Vaccination commissioner Christoph Krupp told newspapers of the Funke Media Group that, by May, a government task force would put forward a concept to achieve the goal of setting up a state-guaranteed system for vaccine production.

He said the system should include a network of companies that could each take on individual stages of the production process.

Krupp also called on the European Union as a whole to increase its production capacities. "In the case of a pandemic, the Europeans should be in a position to produce a new agent for the entire European population within a quarter of a year," he said.

"That would be 500 million doses. Germany should make a vigorous contribution," he was quoted as saying in a preview of the interview.

Vaccination glitches
Krupp's call for EU and German self-sufficiency in vaccine production comes as the bloc continues to experience hitches in its current vaccination rollout.

In the latest setback, the British-Swedish vaccine manufacturer AstraZeneca has announced that it will be delivering only 100 million of the expected 220 million doses to EU states by the middle of 2021.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn has also announced that the recently authorized vaccine from the US multinational Johnson & Johnson will not be arriving till the middle or end of April.

The European Commission has ordered at least 1.4 billion doses of the four coronavirus vaccines authorized in the EU, which also include the German-US BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine and that from the US company Moderna.

Although the new dose order should be more than enough for the some 450 million people living in the European Union, supply difficulties, export restrictions and bureaucratic tangles have led to a current shortfall in the bloc — which lags well behind the US, UK and Israel with its vaccination program.

 

COVID-19: Foreign secretary calls EU threat to block vaccine exports to UK and others 'brinkmanship'
The EU's delivery of COVID vaccines has been slower compared with the UK rollout, where nearly 25 million have had a first dose.
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19...ountries-with-high-vaccination-rates-12248671

The foreign secretary has described the EU threat to block vaccine exports to the UK and other countries with higher vaccine rollouts as "brinkmanship".

Dominic Raab said he was "surprised" at Ursula von der Leyen's comments, saying he "wasn't aware of any plans to restrict lawfully contracted supply to the UK".

"It is normally what the UK and EU team up with to reject when other countries with less democratic regimes than our own engage in that kind of brinkmanship," he said.

The European Union's delivery of COVID vaccines has been far slower than the rollout in the UK, where 25 million adults have now had their first dose.

It has decided not to approve vaccines on an emergency basis, as the UK's regulator - the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA) - has done.

With the EU facing a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic and less than a tenth of its population vaccinated, European Commission president Ms von der Leyen accused AstraZeneca - which helped develop the Oxford University vaccine - of having "underproduced and underdelivered" to the bloc.

She warned she was "ready to use whatever tool we need" to ensure "Europe gets its fair share".

"We are in the crisis of the century," she told a news briefing.

"If this situation does not change, we will have to reflect on how to make exports to vaccine-producing countries, dependent on their level of openness.

"We will reflect on whether exports to countries who have higher vaccination rates than us are still proportionate."

Downing Street said in response that the UK expects Brussels to "stand by its commitment" not to "restrict exports by companies where they are fulfilling their contractual responsibilities".

At a Number 10 news briefing this evening, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: "There should not be restrictions on the export of vaccines by companies where they are fulfilling, contractual, responsive committees.

"And so the supply of vaccines from EU production facilities to the UK is indeed fulfilling contractual responsibilities."

Mr Raab said Ms von der Leyen should explain her remarks.

"I think it takes some explaining because the world's watching... it also cuts across the direct assurances that we had from the commission," he told the Reuters news agency.

"We expect those assurances and legal contracted supply to be respected. Frankly, I'm surprised we're having this conversation."

In response to some European countries halting rollouts of the AstraZeneca jab due to concerns it can result in blood clots, deputy chief medical officer Professor Jonathan Van Tam said he expects the EU regulator to draw the same conclusions as the current UK position.

"We are still firmly convinced that the benefits of the A-Z vaccine in preventing COVID-19 outweigh the risks of side effects," he said.

"I see the enthusiasm of the British people to push on with this because vaccines don't save lives if they're in fridges, they only save lives if they're in arms."

All 27 EU states have been facing an acute shortage of COVID-19 vaccines for some time.

Ms von der Leyen spoke as six EU countries complained about reduced deliveries that are hampering the bloc's troubled inoculation programme.

She was asked why the Commission was effectively sparking a "vaccine war with the UK" over exports of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, given that a large number of doses are laying unused in some member states due to fears over side-effects.

In response to a suggestion that her remarks were designed to distract from the bloc's slow vaccine rollout, she said she wanted to highlight the need for "reciprocity".

And she insisted: "I trust AstraZeneca, I trust the vaccines."

Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine doses for Europe and the UK are being produced in BioNTech's German manufacturing sites, as well as in Pfizer's manufacturing site in Belgium.

Ms von der Leyen said the EU has granted 314 requests for vaccine exports and has only refused one since authorisation was introduced on 1 February.

She said the flow of vaccines was smooth with the United States, but voiced frustration over lack of deliveries of the Oxford vaccine from Britain.

"We are still waiting for doses to come from the UK," she said.

The EU chief has been under pressure over the EU's handling of the bloc's vaccination rollout, with Brussels having recently engaged in a bitter row with drugmaker AstraZeneca.

The dispute, which at one point saw the EU controversially threaten to override the Brexit agreement with the UK over the Irish border, came after AstraZeneca said the initial number of doses it could supply to the EU would be lower than first thought, due to manufacturing issues.

Ms von der Leyen has previously admitted a country on its own - such as the UK - can act as a "speedboat" compared with the EU's "tanker" in the delivery of coronavirus jabs.

However her latest comments - which suggest the EU will seek to safeguard scarce vaccine doses for its own citizens - risks escalating tensions once again with the UK.

Boris Johnson's official spokesman said: "I would point you back to the conversation the prime minister had with Ursula von der Leyen earlier this year. She confirmed then that the focus of their mechanism was on transparency and not intended to restrict exports by companies where they are fulfilling their contractual responsibilities.

"It remains the case we would expect the EU to continue to stand by its commitment."

The EU's sluggish vaccine campaign also threatens to delay the bloc's proposals to create a vaccine passport that could allow people to travel more freely in time for the summer holidays.

Its "digital green pass" would provide proof a person has been vaccinated, as well as test results for those not yet inoculated and information on recovery for people who have had COVID-19.

Some southern European countries such as Spain and Greece back the move which would unlock the bloc's tourism sector which has been badly-hit by the pandemic.

But others, including France and Belgium, have expressed concern that easing travel only for vaccinated people would be unfair.

 

Pfizer warns EU to back down on Covid vaccine threats to UK
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/pfizer-eu-covid-vaccine-threats-uk-b925289.html

Pfizer has warned the European Union to back down from its threat to block vaccines to the UK because the firm “heavily” depends on the country for vital ingredients.

It comes after the EU’s chief, Ursula von der Leyen, said she would halt the export of coronavirus vaccines into Britain.

She criticised AstraZeneca on Wednesday for having “underproduced and underdelivered” to the bloc and said the EU will consider halting vaccine exports to countries with higher coverage rates than its own.

But Pfizer and its partner, BioNTech, have told Brussels that the UK has the power to retaliate by withholding raw and crucial materials needed for its jab, the Telegraph reports.

A senior source close to the vaccine-production process told the newspaper that Pfizer was “heavily dependent” on supplies of lipid ingredients from the UK.

Pfizer factories in the EU have been receiving “fatty molecules” from a chemicals firm based in Yorkshire.

“They [Pfizer/BioNTech] told the commission that if the UK shuts down the lipids then the whole process grinds to a halt in weeks,” the source added.

The EU is struggling to get sufficient supplies of the AstraZeneca jab to accelerate its own vaccination programme - which lags far behind the UK’s.

A Pfizer spokesman said: “We have been clear with all stakeholders that the free movement of goods and supply across borders is absolutely critical to Pfizer and the patients we serve.

“We are working closely with governments around the world, including the UK Government and the European Commission, to ensure the supply of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in accordance with the agreed schedules.”