I wasn’t aware you’d gone from windmilling randomly to requiring a number to the nearest euro. It sounds like more of a “naughty giant pharma company” story than the “evil EU” story certain posters would like it to be. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...id-vaccine-exports-amid-astrazeneca-shortfall Von der Leyen’s spokesperson said: “She made it clear that she expects AstraZenecato deliver on the contractual arrangements foreseen in the advance purchasing agreement. “She reminded Mr Soriot that the EU has invested significant amounts in the company up front precisely to ensure that production is ramped up even before the conditional market authorisation is delivered by the European Medicines Agency.
You really are having a bad week Watford. After yesterday's posts I thought you would have learned a lesson? You made it sound like the EU was the one that sorted AZ vaccine? From what you are showing me, that article says the have just paid upfront money for the vials? Col is right, like my post yesterday in that they have made a complete balls up of the vaccine roll out. Just open your eyes and see the news rather than keep defending the indefensible? I also here the Germanys are now saying the AZ in only 8% effective in the over 65’s? Great timing! Funny us ‘isolationists’ here are having our own vaccine threatened or blocked by the open EU?
I seem to remember a while back that the Americans were putting money into AZ trials (I maybe confused) however the government has thrown loads of money at this and it's paid dividends. The EU (through red tape and staples) have had a nightmare. Remember the comments of "eggs in one basket' and if we didn't join there agreement it would be 'detrimental'. Best move we have done in a long time. We were the ones who invested and trusted our amazing scientists to get the job done. AZ will supply us even with the EU threats because long term it would be in their best interests. This story is down to EU mistakes and now they need to come out with threats. Maybe they should remember the words of Barnier 'You can't have your cake and eat it'
Bloody hell lucky that wasn't a UK story otherwise we would have innumerable amounts of posts about our incompetent government.
Or our incompetent media. I’ve never said other governments are perfect as clearly they aren’t. I think we’d all rather have had Merkel as PM on this issue than De Pfeffel though. Even those of us who pretend to be spitfire pilots in our spare time.
There wouldn't be a blockade if vital supplies were going to France? I heard some Interesting comments about our future from my Tory MP mate saying that we need to be less reliant on others and produce it ourselves.
Why would anyone want some federalist as PM when we have a monarchy? We are not a republic Watford... get a grip!
The EU have messed up distribution of the vaccine big time and are getting really defensive. We can certainly produce more ourselves generally, and buy farther afield than the EU eg wine
There are two AZ contracted manufacturing sites, one, Oxford Biomedica, set up with government investment precisely to create a vaccine production capacity in the UK, and Cobra Biologics (Swedish/British firm) in Keele, with fill and finish done in Wrexham by Wrockhardt (Indian company). More is made in the Netherlands, I think, and transported to Wrexham for bottling. The EU has ballsed things up big time on this and demonstrated that emergency management is well beyond its capabilities. It’s is trying to tackle something that we have already suffered from, the persistent over promising from the Oxford /AZ team - remember, vaccine will be ready by September, 30 million doses for U.K. by end of 2020, 4 million doses by end of 2020, oops drug not approved until 2021 and only 500k doses available. AZ contracted to provide the EU with 80 million doses in the first shipment, now cut to 31m. They are making AZ choose which customer to let down most - them or the UK and other non EU customers. But as we have two manufacturing sites in this country AZ should be able to supply the UK regardless of EU export, which are not, as you know, aimed solely at the UK. The Pfizer jab, made in Belgium for Europe (which includes the UK) has well publicised temporary manufacturing problems, everyone will be getting reduced supplies for the next few weeks. So the EU is desperately trying to make itself look better and to put up a bit of a fight for its citizens. You can interpret this as some kind of vindictive attack on the UK, but I don’t think it is, although our roll out of the vaccine is obviously embarrassing to them because of their own failures. The current EU proposal is just for early notification of export of EU produced vaccine, not (yet) any proposal to block exports. Though that might come, and would probably be supported if the UK government were doing the same thing. The worst part of this is probably the scope it gives the ‘usual suspects’ to play the victim.
Astrazeneca is an Anglo Swedish company...it has manufacturing plants all over the place...I know of plants in UK, Holland and India...I am sure other places too. The EU did put money into building the facility in Holland. The EU have not yet authorized the usage of the AZ/Oxford vaccine. The sticking point is its effectiveness in the elderly ...which is said to be low. It is certainly true that the vaccine ( and to be fair any vaccine) is less effective in the elderly (some are saying it is as low as 10% in the over 80)..that is why I have been pushing to get the elderly the full vaccine at the correct time...and not delay. Two doses will give better coverage than one ...even if it is reduced from what is should be to about 50% protection giving a less severe disease At the moment, the EU just asking to see where all the vaccines are going....but contracts have been signed...and they cannot block movement of the vaccine on a presigned contract for a vaccine they have yet to approve.... Brexit paperwork and export licences are another issue all together. However the rate of vaccine production is actually not yet meeting demand...who knew people would want it so much (doh!!) I wonder again if this is a smoke screen...
No, no, no Beth, the Oxford vaccine is 100% a British achievement and it works perfectly in everyone, even if dosed in homeopathic quantities. Stick with the programme. Apparently the single dose Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) vaccine, based on the same approach as AZ, will be reporting phase III in the next couple of weeks. Could speed things up a lot, if they make enough of it, quickly enough. Why did vaccines minister Zahawi refuse to say how many doses the UK has been promised by the manufacturers for the next few weeks and how many we actually have in stocks now? Hardly confidence boosting is it? At least he got it right when warning against the dead end of ‘vaccine nationalism’. There is no return to normality until the whole world is protected.
I said this around Christmas that people in Belgium were P'd that we had the Pfizer jab passed and they hadn't. Even then they were having problems. Funny how they used to say MHRA were the world leaders and as soon as we leave it's not as respected as the EMA? As for wine... (I should have used this on the other thread) I believe in the agreement it was okay for French wine to come here without the same problems? This maybe a myth but I will look into it.
