AstraZeneca boss blames EU’s late vaccine order for causing supply delays

In an interview in London, La Repubblica spoke with the CEO of AstraZeneca, Pascal Soriot, who offered a blunt assessment of the EU’s procurement strategy. You can read the full interview here.

First on the agenda was why his company had failed to provide more details on the supply problem detected in their European plants:

“I think we have been relatively specific with the information. Of course, we are all very disappointed. We would like to produce more. I think we will deliver up to Europe in the month of February a reasonable quantity actually, very similar to what others have delivered on a monthly basis. But of course, it’s less than expected and also because our vaccine is easy to use people expected more so we could scale up. Our team is working 24/7 to fix the very much issues of production of the vaccine itself.

“You have two steps in the production of a vaccine: one is you produce the vaccine itself. We call it the drug substance, the vaccine. Then, when we are finished with it, we move this into different plants where we the vaccine into vials where it becomes the drug product, the final product. For Europe, the drugs substance is produced in two plants, in The Netherlands and Belgium. The product is then produced in Germany and Italy where they are at full capacity. Europe’s production problem lies with the former in the production of the substance.”

Soriot wouldn’t pass judgement on whether the EU signed its vaccine procurement contract too late. “But the UK contract was signed three months before the European vaccine deal. So with the UK we have had an extra three months to fix all the glitches we experienced. As for Europe, we are three months behind in fixing those glitches. Would I like to do better? Of course.”

Soriot was asked how many doses the EU is going to receive by February:

“First of all, as soon as we get an approval by EMA, in the next few days, we will be shipping at least three million doses immediately to Europe, then we’ll have another shipment about a week later and then the third or fourth week of February. And the target is to deliver 17 million doses by February. So, I am just estimating roughly, that would mean like about 3 million doses for Germany, probably 2.5 million for Italy and something like 2 million for Spain. I don’t know exactly what the precise allocation is, but it’s based on the population of each country.”

He told La Repubblica that from February production capacity will be 100 million doses a month. This would take AstraZeneca to 1.2 billion doses a year.

“Europe said the vaccine is common good and everybody needs to get access at the same time globally. That’s what we are doing. Europe is getting 17 per cent of our global supply for a month for 5 per cent of the world population. The problem is: 100 million doses is a lot, but we have 7.5 billion people in the world.

“Anyway, we didn’t commit with the EU, by the way. It’s not a commitment we have to Europe: it’s a best effort, we said we are going to make our best effort. The reason why we said that is because Europe at the time wanted to be supplied more or less at the same time as the UK, even though the contract was signed three months later. So we said, “Ok, we’re going to do our best, we’re going to try, but we cannot commit contractually because we are three months behind UK”. We knew it was a super stretch goal and we know it’s a big issue, this pandemic. But our contract is not a contractual commitment. It’s a best effort. Basically we said we’re going to try our best, but we can’t guarantee we’re going to succeed.”

On Monday the German newspaper, Handelsblatt, quoted government officials as saying that the AstraZeneca vaccine is just 8 per cent effective for the over-65s. It appears to have been a misreading of the numbers. German authorities have strongly denied the story.

“What can I say? I don’t have any idea where this number is coming [from]. It’s incorrect. Several regulators of many countries have approved this vaccine for people 18 years old and above. How can one think that all these people, all these regulators around the world would have approved our vaccine if its efficiency was eight per cent? I mean, of course not… Like testing and masks in the past, vaccines have become a political tool. It’s unfortunate because you would like to tell people this is a moment to come together, really work together and try and resolve this issue. It’s not a moment to use the testing of vaccines as a political tool”.

Soriot was asked for assurances that the vaccine works well for the elderly. He didn’t provide a figure and said that AstraZeneca’s team was still finalising its analysis.

“The issue with the elderly data is not so much whether it works or not. It’s that we have today a limited amount of data in the older population…. So the answer to this is that the data is showing good level of antibodies in elderly as you see in younger people.”

Soriot addressed fears about new virus mutations, explaining that Moderna has published data on the South African variant regarding a process called neutralisation, where blood is taken from vaccinated individuals and their antibodies are applied to the virus to test the strength of immune response. Neutralisation is 6-fold lower with the South African variant, but this is still within the range that would allow the vaccine to control the disease, he says.

“I believe it’s logical to think we’ll have the same effect as seen with the Moderna vaccine but we do not know yet. The neutralisation may be reduced. But I also think that there is a good chance patients will still be protected.”