He also said why quercetin wasnât as effective because the patients were deficient in zinc. Both alone are no good they much be taken together as quercetin supports zinc from entering cells
Covid-19: AstraZeneca chief executive defends vaccine delivery delay to EU
The Swedish company says it had similar âteething problemsâ with UK delivery
52 minutes ago Updated: 43 minutes ago
Derek Scally in Berlin
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AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot has attributed its vaccine delivery shortfall in Europe to production teething problems â and the EUâs delay in signing a contract with the Swedish pharmaceutical firm.
Mr Soriot said he understands frustration with his company but hit back at claims that its cut in vaccine dose delivery to the EU was allowing it prioritise the UK and other customers.
The European Commission has described delays in vaccine delivery â 40 per cent below targets in March â as ânot acceptableâ, with some EU member states threatening legal action.
Mr Soriot said such threats are baseless, claiming his company had always only promised its âbest effortâ to supply the EU in parallel with the UK.
The companyâs problems at EU production plants in the Netherlands and Belgium, he said, are due to a lower output in some production tanks containing vaccine culture.
âWe had similar teething problems in the UK but the contract with the British was signed three months before that with Brussels and we had three months more time to sort out issues,â he told Germanyâs Die Welt daily and Italyâs La Repubblica.
The AstraZeneca chief executive said his company was not profiteering or price-gouging, as it had undertaken to produce the vaccine in conjunction with Oxford University on a non-profit basis. Nor would the French-born manager tolerate any preferred treatment for non-EU customers.
âIâm a European, our chairman is too, as is our finance chief,â he said.
As for German media claims that the vaccine had an efficacy of merely 8 percent in the elderly population, Mr Soriot said he had âno ideaâ where such claims came from.
âHow can one assume that testing bodies around the world would grant a licence to a substance with only eight per cent efficacy,â he asked.
The companyâs vaccine is already being used in the UK, with the EUâs medical approval likely to follow next week.
Pending approval the company will deliver three million doses to the EU, increasing each week until a ceiling of 17 million per seven days is reached. The doses will be divided and distributed around the EU based on population size.
Calling into doubt the vaccineâs efficacy, he warned, was a gift to anti-vaccine movements gathering strength around the continent.
âWhoever has something to say about security or efficacy should do it in scientific circles, itâs disgraceful to do this for political means because it reduces the trust in vaccination,â he said.
Among the concerns raised about the vaccineâs efficacy are how only eight percent of the subjects in the Oxford vaccine trials were between 56 and 69 years of age, and only three to four percent were over 70 years of age.
Mr Soriot said that ethical reasons were behind the low numbers of older test subjects.
âOxford ⊠didnât want to test older people until they had enough data from the 18-55 year-old group,â he said. âBut we have robust data that prove a strong antibody production against the virus among older people.â
He said it was too soon to tell whether the companyâs vaccine would protect against virus mutations already in circulation.
Politicians across Europe have backed calls to introduce export permits for vaccines, amid concerns that AstraZenecaâs EU-based factories was prioritising production for other areas in the world at the expense of Europeans.
Mr Soriot said such talk of export restrictions was âexactly the oppositeâ of undertakings given by the European Commission in recent months. Such proposals for its EU production facilities, he added, risked undermining the companyâs international delivery chain.
The French executive suggested a lack of global readiness for pandemics, and the resulting lapse into nationalist instincts, was the main challenge in tackling the pandemic.
Vaccine development in record time âcould have been a Fourth of July, Independence Day kind of a moment but it unfortunately wasnât because there was a little bit of âme firstâ behaviour,â he told a virtual panel of the World Economic Forum.
As well as a battle with Brussels, the Swedish company is being sued by a pension fund on behalf of its investors, claiming they suffered losses because of flaws in the companyâs testing of its coronavirus vaccine.
Game changer!
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Hanz & Fritzel made an a bollox of the procurement process with their bureaucracy and now we are left in limbo while the UK and the US plough on.
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Time to leave the EU. Weâve gotten enough roads off them âŠ
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Sure we canât even build anymore roads now so whatâs the point?
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Exactly. Being in the EU is adverse to the health of our people⊠they have to go.
Should we all just up and follow Joe Rogan? Is he the answer?
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Yes. Starting with the mushrooms, peyote, dot and lsd
MMA is the answer?
Back in your box Brussels
Given the seriousness why canât the companies making the vaccine outsource some production to other companies for an agreed fee to increase the speed of production ?
Minister for Health on the radio with Claire Byrne saying no recent outbreaks here were related to international travel.
Why have we Garda checkpoints outside the airport then?
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I think Sanofi are doing that for Pfizer
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NPHET havenât called for zero Covid as yet & the health experts are reluctant to do so
The public are at odds with the health experts calling for this
The public are absolute simpletons mate.
They just want someone to blame other than themselves for breaking all the guidelines around pre-Christmas socialising.
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The public have always being ahead on issues like this or so they sayâŠ
I think there are a lot of people frightened that the end of lockdowns could be nigh.
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Should be more companies chipping in together âŠEveryone could make money and more importantly get things back up and running , if these vaccines actually work that is âŠ
I have some hope for this lad
What I cant get my head around is with numbers dropping at pace and cases halving every 10 days why there are a significant number of people looking for more restrictions like reducing 5km to 2km for exercise, joggers and cyclists to wear masks etc. Many people did not travel home for Christmas to see families but on the 27th of January and Christmas being a full 11 months away people want more of the same again.
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