> According to the newspaper, the doses likely come from AstraZeneca's Halix plant in the Netherlands, which hasn't yet been approved for EU production.
As of two days ago AstraZeneca hadn't sought approval for the plant [0].
And I've heard insinuations that they are not in a hurry to apply, cause they can hide behind the lack of approval for their lack of European deliveries, and in the meantime export vaccines at a premium to the UK. Not sure if any of this is true, but it would be quite a thing. Hope they just get nationalized
- How are they hiding if they are getting criticised anyway (including here).
- UK is getting AZ vaccines at very low price like everyone else.
More likely they haven't applied because Halix plant doesn't meet EMA standards. So either EMA standards are unreasonable (as others are happy) or AZ (or a contractor) have messed something up.
And nationalized by who - they are Anglo / Swedish - so 50% UK / 50% EU?
The fact that they have 30 Million finished doses stored means they think they could sell them, there is little reason to store product you can't use and even less reason to put vaccine substance you think is of poor quality trough the bottling and packaging process.
The Halix site could reportedly make 5-6 million doses per month in January, so someone is evidently content with not even trying to get approval for the plant.
- A conspiracy on the part of AZ and many of it EU employees (in a part Swedish company with a French national CEO) to deny EU citizens vaccines. They're doing this by refusing to seek approval for Halix.
- There is another reason why they haven't sought approval from EMA. I'd suggest the most likely is that they believe that they wouldn't get approval. Given the issues we've seen so far with manufacturing and regulation during the pandemic this seems to me to be very likely.
In the meantime what are they supposed to do with the vaccines they have already produced (which presumably wouldn't get EMA approval as they were made in a plant that wasn't approved) and which other countries have approved and which will save lives when they are used?
I'm not saying either side is in the right - just that a conspiracy seems the least likely underlying cause.
Uh, are you aware that AZ is massively short of its commitments to deliver doses due to manufacturing problems? They are something like 70 million doses short, so it is public knowledge that they have to choose which deliveries to honour first.
The particular plant started operating in October 2020, at which point things are far enough along that there is no practical reason for why an application can't be started.
Precisely, which is why I think a manufacturing issue is the most likely reason why they haven't applied for EMA authorisation yet. EU regulators can be and have been very picky.
If you want to buy into the theory that they are choosing to favour the UK and other countries at the expense of the EU then fine. There may be on contractual reason why they feel they have to do that but some sort of conspiracy seems far fetched at this stage.
would make a bit of sense, but isn't it more fun to think of BigFarma as a bunch of conspiring, greedy MBA's with no morals that will do anything for a profit?
As of two days ago AstraZeneca hadn't sought approval for the plant [0].
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-eu-uk-...