Maybe AZ should have charged €3 per shot instead of €2 and spent the extra € on a PR agency. They just seem to be constantly taking a hammering in the press, unfairly I’d say.
So they are only technically allowed to adjust the price to take into account the different operational costs depending on the manufacturing site.
[1] https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/astrazeneca-puts-a-time-...
I do think people aren’t giving AZ enough credit for doing it at cost though. Especially compared to the €50 per dose Pfizer initially quoted the EU!
The UK and EU supply chains are completely separate to the best of my knowledge. The UK manufactures and packages its supply, and the EU manufactures and packages its supply.
There is definetly a couple of case studies for a lot of discipline in that. Besides virology, epidemiology or medcine.
To be fair, AstraZeneca wanted to ship those to Canada and Mexico, but Biden (and earlier Trump) has forbidden exporting vaccines out of US.
I read an unsourced claim on HN a few weeks ago that they did 9 phase-3 trials, and applied for approval on the basis of only 2. Which would be rather bad if true. Moreover, it is clear that their 1.5 dose regimen was a mistake in trial execution.
Meanwhile, the FDA still hasn't approved AZ.
It seems possible that AZ was overeager to present good results, and thus was less cautious than they should have been. It's only a possibility, but its one that worries me.
Anyone here have an source to confirm / debunk the rumor that AZ did 9 trials, and only applied on the basis of 2 trials?
edit: I just looked at the stats in the UK, and it certainly seems like since they started vaccinating cases have dropped off, and deaths have dropped of even faster. Since vaccines are probably targeted at the more vulnerable, it certainly seems to show that the vaccine has very positive net effects.
EU is buying vaccines with profit margins, and those are delivering.
If that cost structure is proving to not be enough for AZ, then they shouldn't have accepted it, because clearly what they are doing now is borderline criminal, all while hiding behind a "best effort" clause in a contract, that's being stretched far beyond what is acceptable.
They messed up the trials, they set up production infrastructure that would have never worked to begin with (because of the UK contract not allowing exports of vaccines), giving notice of failed deliveries on short notice, and still make new promises of deliveries that are showing yet again not to be true. They are yet to file approval for other production facilities in EU that should have been working for MONTHS.
Now they dare to question independent regulators from different countries by saying their vaccines are fine - when they didn't seem to even have bothered to investigate any of the cases - it's like they looked at a spreadsheet and said "this anomaly is within these intervals", completely disregarding the type of cases, their local incidence, time window and age group. Ignoring the fact that these occurrences are 4x greater then the ones in the UK.
I understand that the EU doesn't want to file a lawsuit because it's counter productive, but at this point I think it's the only path - pull the funding, place it on other candidates, sue AZ. It's too much incompetence for such an endeavor, which makes you question if they are not simply cutting corners. Again, they seem to be pushing "best effort" to what is acceptable.