Poor Astra Zeneca

Moderna and Pfizer are expected to make $18 and $15 billion in revenue this year respectively, thanks to their COVID-19 vaccines. Guess how much Astra-Zeneca, the British company, will make? Zero profit. That’s right, AZ sells at cost price. And yet, see the amount of flak and negative publicity they draw in the West? Sarah Boseley looked into the reasons.

 

In America, the reasons are not political. Rather, it’s based on their (mis)handling of an early adverse reaction during clinical trial way back in September. In the UK, the trail was stopped and restarted within days. The US regulatory body though felt it had not been told of the issue early enough. The situation was also complicated, says Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology in London by the intent of the trial:

“I think that some of the difficulties were that the trials were being set up by Oxford to answer public health questions, whereas very clearly Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna’s trials in the US were set up to get FDA (regulatory) approval.”

 

AZ’s communication has left a lot to be desired as well. They came up with two numbers on efficacy, one based on two doses, the other based on half dosage due to supply issues. If you give two very different numbers, it raises eyebrows everywhere but AZ didn’t put enough effort to pre-emptively explain the reasons.

 

The EU’s response, though, seems to be political. On 25 January, a German paper declared AZ had a paltry 8% effectivity in elderly people. 4 days later, the French President echoed that saying it was “quasi-effective” in the over-65’s. Both countries have since revoked their stance. But the damage has been done: in Germany and France, the elderly don’t want to take AZ. This at a time when the EU can’t get any vaccines anyway…

 

Then there’s the EU’s frustration on the lack of supply. A Belgian MP accused AZ of being dishonest and arrogant. Many European MP’s continue to question the efficacy of AZ, even though the European Medicines Agency has given it a clean bill of health. And you thought only Indian MP’s and MLA’s claim to know better science than the scientists.

 

For a continent with so much mistrust in AZ, it’s almost comical that Italian military police entered an AZ factory on allegation of 29 million hidden doses that were supposedly going to be smuggled to the UK. Which leaves me scratching my head: if the EU believes the vaccine is useless, then why care if the AZ vaccine is “smuggled” into the UK? But if the vaccine is good, then why are their governments trashing it at every opportunity? Is it all rooted in resentment over Brexit?

 

One feels sorry for AZ: it has become a political football for the EU to kick around. One British MP wonders as much, saying the EU governments which have bungled up the procurement of vaccines so badly now want to “whip up an anti-AZ mob because it gives them political cover”.

 

Contrast the EU’s behavior with the extremely mature manner in which India and the US are handling their irritation with each other. The US would like India to allow non-COVID medication to move freely (e.g. crocin etc) while India would like the US to remove its ban on key raw materials to make more vaccines. But you don’t see politicians on either side doing all this very acrimoniously.

 

Like I said in an earlier blog, the EU only keeps going from bad to worse on all matters COVID-19. Just when you think they can’t do any worse, they show they have no bottom in sight.