Comment by Mvandenbergh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mvandenbergh | Hacker News Reader

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Part of the issue, and this is something that both AZ and the EC fucked up in their contract negotiations is not thinking about this contingency. "Best reasonable efforts" is pretty clear... if you only have one customer.

If you have multiple customers, who signed slightly different contracts at different times, and who also have different side agreements regarding specific facilities they may have paid for in part or in whole, you really need to define how you make allocation decisions in case of shortfall so that everyone understands their risk exposure.

I will personally hold the EC responsible because although AZ has also messed up by not negotiating a clearer contract, it is the EC that indirectly works for me and it is their job to think about this on my and my family's behalf. Had they understood the consequences of being so far back in the production queue much earlier they could have spent more on upgrading production but it is not clear to me that they even understood this until January. While I'm sure that they are trying their best, and bad luck with Sanofi plays a part here as well (as does the incompetence of e.g. the Dutch government in managing distribution), I am pretty unimpressed with how they have dropped the ball here.

It's not good them saying, "oh AZ isn't producing as much as they thought they would". Ok, cool story bro but they're making a novel biological, so you should have anticipated this and done more to prepare plans B, C, all the way through F. Not just placed a few commercial orders and then hope it all works out.

But if the contract states there are no competing customers, and talks about 4 different sites, I'd say most bases should have been covered. Az then turning around, and using three of these sites exclusively for UK production (since it was 'first') kinda defeats that.

Then there is indeed a difference in contract law, where the UK is far more focused on the letter of the contract, while European law is more about 'what could have been done'.

In the middle of a pandemic there isn't much we can do against pharmaceuticals. In the mean while has Az delivered more than Moderna until now. So, we should take what we can. Only thing we could blame the EC on is that we should not have based our strategy of vaccinating out on such an unreliable, inexperienced partner with a complicated biological process. Looking back and keeping the Pfizer vaccin European would have been less naive, but we would have started these vaccins wars. Will be interesting what the long term consequences are of having UK and US vaccinated two months sooner. I don't think Europe will forget this.

But if the contract states there are no competing customers, and talks about 4 different sites, I'd say most bases should have been covered.

But does the AZ-EU Advance Purchase Agreement[1], which is the somewhat redacted document that was published, talk about 4 different sites? I haven't found anything about specific sites so far, nor any guarantee that there are no competing customers. Have I missed something?

In section 5.1, it does state that AZ shall use its BREs to manufacturer the Initial European Doses within the EU. Then in section 5.4, it states that AZ shall use its BREs to manufacture the Vaccine at manufacturing sites located within the EU, and that specifically for section 5.4 only, that includes the UK. If the exception proves the rule, those sections together appear to imply that AZ must try to manufacture those initial batches for the EU within the EU not including the UK, and then any subsequent manufacture can be done in either the EU or UK (and otherwise there are some additional provisions about other possibilities). Maybe a lawyer can comment on the choice of language there, but it seems awkwardly written to me.

[1] https://www.rai.it/dl/doc/2021/02/19/1613725900577_AZ_FIRMAT...

It does not say there is no competing contract, it says no contract would prevent fulfilment of its contract. The EU contract stipulates that the delivery schedule is only an estimate, so another contract that was estimated to permit that delivery schedule would not conflict. It also seems to stipulate that the initial 300M doses will be manufactured within the EU, but this is incidental to this claim.

I think the underlying problem is that there is just not any real cooperation on global vaccine distribution. Certainly the details about the enforceability of the various contracts wouldn't matter if the customers all talk between themselves and agree on what would be acceptable modifications of the delivery schedule.

In the event, it seems neither Boris nor Biden seem very interested in considering anyone else before they've scored enough points at home, and meanwhile real international cooperation on vaccine deliveries is dead. Oh well, hope not all trade follows that pattern shrug.

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