So, coronavirus...

[Margin__Walker]

Good to see you HH. Take it easy,

Agree on the behavioural thing btw. Brit aren't fundamentally more disobedient than other Western Europeans. We're in this mess because the public haven't followed instructions is a very convenient narrative for the Government to hitch their wagon to given their abject failings on pretty much everything other than the vaccine.

[Ymx]

Kicking off about not getting enough, but then still not having signed it off. and demanding to close off all exports.

The EU is a joke.

[fishfoodie]

Germany demanding that the EU block all export of covid vaccines, so that the EU can get it's fair share...

As the head of AstraZeneca pointed out, EU Has ordered 17% of the Worlds supply for just 5% of the Worlds population.

Fair shares LOL

And what share did the UK get; versus its percentage of the Worlds population ?

[TheNatalShark]

Germany demanding that the EU block all export of covid vaccines, so that the EU can get it's fair share...

As the head of AstraZeneca pointed out, EU Has ordered 17% of the Worlds supply for just 5% of the Worlds population.

Fair shares LOL

I genuinely don't get it, what am I missing here?

AZ were never going to
a) market to significant blocks of global pop, ie China
b) vaccine isn't (yet) tested and approved for pre-adult population

Why would you honestly include all these groups in the potential consumer population? Just seems like a throwaway "we're already being disproportionately biased to European supply" comment. Seemed odd in context of what preceded it.

[Openside]

TBF to OS, I don't think he's intrinsically dishonest like Bimbo.

I think he's just a little bit dim.

Another one with an ego bigger than his imagined intellect.

[Openside]

Kicking off about not getting enough, but then still not having signed it off. and demanding to close off all exports.

The EU is a joke.

Its certainly not a good look esp. when the supply problems are down to the plant in Belgium.

[Saint]

Kicking off about not getting enough, but then still not having signed it off. and demanding to close off all exports.

The EU is a joke.

Its certainly not a good look esp. when the supply problems are down to the plant in Belgium.

It's a strange place to be. The bluster on this from the EU is much more akin to what you would expect from BoJo

[Tichtheid]

Kicking off about not getting enough, but then still not having signed it off. and demanding to close off all exports.

The EU is a joke.

Its certainly not a good look esp. when the supply problems are down to the plant in Belgium.

It's a strange place to be. The bluster on this from the EU is much more akin to what you would expect from BoJo

Strange things have been happening in the last few years, I never imagined I'd be on the same side as Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke on any issue, but there I was.

I hate the thought that supply of the vaccine could become a political issue.

[Sandstorm]

I hate the thought that supply of the vaccine could become a political issue.

It was a racist issue last month. And an economic one before that. God knows it’ll probably be religious next.

[Openside]

Its certainly not a good look esp. when the supply problems are down to the plant in Belgium.

It's a strange place to be. The bluster on this from the EU is much more akin to what you would expect from BoJo

Strange things have been happening in the last few years, I never imagined I'd be on the same side as Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke on any issue, but there I was.

I hate the thought that supply of the vaccine could become a political issue.

Ultimately it’s like any resource where demand outstrips supply it’s a point of conflict

[Insane_Homer]

[tc27]

Kicking off about not getting enough, but then still not having signed it off. and demanding to close off all exports.

The EU is a joke.

Its certainly not a good look esp. when the supply problems are down to the plant in Belgium.

It's a strange place to be. The bluster on this from the EU is much more akin to what you would expect from BoJo

It comes down to the EUCO signing a deal 3 months later and asking for the same delivery volumes - AZ said they would try their best and seem to think they have a contract that reflects this.

Fair play to people who can get out of the Brexit trenches and call out the EUCO on this - its pretty shameful behaviour.

[Saint]

Its certainly not a good look esp. when the supply problems are down to the plant in Belgium.

It's a strange place to be. The bluster on this from the EU is much more akin to what you would expect from BoJo

It comes down to the EUCO signing a deal 3 months later and asking for the same delivery volumes - AZ said they would try their best and seem to think they have a contract that reflects this.

Fair play to people who can get out of the Brexit trenches and call out the EUCO on this - its pretty shameful behaviour.

I understand exactly how they've reached this point, and it's really very reminiscent of how the UK gov handled PPE. The bluster is also really very reminiscent of how the UK gov handled PPE

[SaintK]

Quite.
Yet they sent the spiv Jenrick out this morning to spin it. I'm sure the "took their resposibilities extremely seriously" but still made misstep after misstep!

Robert Jenrick, the housing secretary, was doing the government interview round this morning and, when asked about the UK’s Covid death toll, he repeated the line used by Boris Johnson yesterday - that the government had done everything it could to save lives.
But in at lease one interview he went further, claiming that on all occasions ministers took the best scientific advice. He told the Today programme:

I’m sure that we could or would have done some things differently with the benefit of hindsight, almost certainly.

But there wasn’t a textbook. I was in many of those meetings with the prime minister and the health secretary and members of the cabinet and I can give you this assurance, that on each occasion they took the best possible scientific and medical advice, they took their responsibilities extremely seriously.

This is not accurate because there is a lot of evidence that, particularly in the second wave of the pandemic, ministers have been ignoring the scientific advice. The issue is complicated, because scientific advice is often qualified, and at times there have been good reasons to ignore it, but the clearest example of advice from Sage being ignored in a manner that is now hard to justify came in September, when the scientists recommended a circuit-breaker lockdown. Boris Johnson did not announce the second English lockdown for another six weeks.

[Saint]

The war between AZ and the EU looks like it's escalating - https://www.politico.eu/article/astraze ... g-with-eu/

Vaccine-maker AstraZeneca has refused to attend a meeting top EU officials scheduled for Wednesday evening amid an escalating dispute over production shortfalls, according to a Commission official.

The cancellation follows an explosive interview with AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot on Tuesday night, in which he insisted the company didn't have a contractual obligation but rather a "best effort" to supply the EU with its vaccine.

Instead of the meeting, the company will respond in writing to Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides' demand for more information, the Commission official said. AstraZeneca did not immediately confirm this plan.

The Commission is demanding more information about the company's projected 60 percent cut to the EU's deliveries in the first quarter of 2021.

The Commission official said that the company did indeed have a "best effort" agreement on deliveries, but it signed an advance purchasing agreement that included the obligation that the company have the manufacturing capacity to deliver the doses.

Amid the bitter recriminations between the two sides — with Soriot accusing the EU of being "emotional" — the chairman of the European Parliament's trade committee, Bernd Lange, has demanded that the contract be made public.

[Saint]

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/2 ... ne-project

It's not clear that Sanofi's manufacturing plants can produce AZ as it's a different technology to what they do. They also don't have any mRNA manufacturing capability of their own

Mutti’s obviously had a word with Macron

PARIS (Reuters) - French pharma giant Sanofi will produce more than 100 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by its competitors Pfizer and BioNTech by the end of the year, CEO Paul Hudson told Le Figaro newspaper in an interview published on Tuesday.

As Sanofi and its British partner GlaxoSmithKline have delayed the launch of their shot to late 2021, the French company decided to approach Pfizer “in order to be helpful as of now”, Hudson said, adding that an agreement with the U.S. company had been reached.

As it will take the rest of the year for Sanofi to get up to speed, this won’t help the EU improve its current level of vaccinations.

So Sanofi are providing asistance with the fill & pack stage it looks like. Sounds like Pfizer are producing their vaccine in quantity faster than they can get it into vials

[Openside]

What the hell?

BRUSSELS/VILNIUS (Reuters) - AstraZeneca has offered to bring forward some deliveries of its COVID-19 vaccine to the European Union while the bloc has asked the British drugmaker if it can divert doses from the UK to make up for a shortfall in supplies, European officials told Reuters.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-heal ... SKBN29V16X

Large bloc has more muscle than go-it-alone single nation shock...?

Surely the EU would not dare breach International law that would be most unusual...

[Lobby]

The war between AZ and the EU looks like it's escalating - https://www.politico.eu/article/astraze ... g-with-eu/

Vaccine-maker AstraZeneca has refused to attend a meeting top EU officials scheduled for Wednesday evening amid an escalating dispute over production shortfalls, according to a Commission official.

The cancellation follows an explosive interview with AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot on Tuesday night, in which he insisted the company didn't have a contractual obligation but rather a "best effort" to supply the EU with its vaccine.

Instead of the meeting, the company will respond in writing to Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides' demand for more information, the Commission official said. AstraZeneca did not immediately confirm this plan.

The Commission is demanding more information about the company's projected 60 percent cut to the EU's deliveries in the first quarter of 2021.

The Commission official said that the company did indeed have a "best effort" agreement on deliveries, but it signed an advance purchasing agreement that included the obligation that the company have the manufacturing capacity to deliver the doses.

Amid the bitter recriminations between the two sides — with Soriot accusing the EU of being "emotional" — the chairman of the European Parliament's trade committee, Bernd Lange, has demanded that the contract be made public.

One of the other reasons for the delay is that the EU apparently insisted that the AZ vaccines for their use were only produced in the EU, as they didn’t want to be reliant on UK-produced vaccines post-Brexit, and the three month delay in the EU signing a deal with AZ left too little time for the Belgian site to get up to speed.

[TheNatalShark]

Yuck.

[Denny Crane]

Sahpra announces controlled compassionate access to Ivermectin

Cape Town – South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) has announced it will allow a controlled compassionate use of Ivermectin to treat Covid-19.

The health product regulator says it will unveil the access protocols for the drug in the coming days.

The announcement was made during a press announcement in collaboration with the National Press Club on Wednesday.

https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa ... 5fed2aa4e8

[tc27]

In more crazy AZ related news police are responding to a suspect package at the AZ finishing plant in Wrexham!

[frodder]

Yuck.

Yuck indeed. I know the AZ procurement practices very well and if there's any scrutiny in their practices then this could be a cluster

[Sandstorm]

Sahpra announces controlled compassionate access to Ivermectin

Cape Town – South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) has announced it will allow a controlled compassionate use of Ivermectin to treat Covid-19.

The health product regulator says it will unveil the access protocols for the drug in the coming days.

The announcement was made during a press announcement in collaboration with the National Press Club on Wednesday.

https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa ... 5fed2aa4e8

Treating a virus with a drug designed to kill parasites. All based on the say-so of one Yank quack. Ok.

"“This does not mean that our position changes around the lack of availability of scientific data surrounding Ivermectin and Covid19...."

[tc27]

Current lockdown in England extended until at least March 5 (which make sense as that's two weeks after the most vulnerable groups will have being vaccinated).

[Sandstorm]

Yuck.

Yuck indeed. I know the AZ procurement practices very well and if there's any scrutiny in their practices then this could be a cluster

Which MPs got blowjobs in 5* hotels from AZ sales reps?

[tabascoboy]

Current lockdown in England extended until at least March 5 (which make sense as that's two weeks after the most vulnerable groups will have being vaccinated).

Infection rate halved apparently in my area since the new lockdown (vaccination only started 11th Jan)

[The Druid]

In more crazy AZ related news police are responding to a suspect package at the AZ finishing plant in Wrexham!

So the French secret service are already (at it)

[frodder]

Yuck.

Yuck indeed. I know the AZ procurement practices very well and if there's any scrutiny in their practices then this could be a cluster

Which MPs got blowjobs in 5* hotels from AZ sales reps?

Close. I was thinking of lack of documentation, audit trails, smoke and mirror conversations and some 'senior' fudgewit crapping over any protocols. Lost count that happened with some backhanders going on as well including a C suite accepting hospitality gifts 2 weeks prior to the announcement of procurement decisions.

I like your interpretation better though

[tc27]

No getting away from this is a low number - could be the supply squeeze we talked about?

Going to need to hit some big numbers (400k+) most other days this week to stay on target now.

[Raggs]

No getting away from this is a low number - could be the supply squeeze we talked about?

Going to need to hit some big numbers (400k+) most other days this week to stay on target now.

It's lower, but it's still 300k+ and still therefore on target to meet the original 2M a week aim.

[Saint]

No getting away from this is a low number - could be the supply squeeze we talked about?

Going to need to hit some big numbers (400k+) most other days this week to stay on target now.

But again, it's actually a significant step up from last week

Tuesday this week 282K across the UK
Tuesday last week 209K across the UK

Las Tuesday the number was actually lower than the Monday - this week it's higher. I still don't understand really what's driving the patterns on a daily and weekly basis though. I;m guessing that there may be a factor of each vax centre not knowing what stock it will have till the Sunday/Monday, therefore not being able to get enough people booked in at the start of the week?

[tc27]

This could get nasty.

[Saint]

This could get nasty.

I don't know what sort of capacity they think they could take from the UK even if that is the case. It's running full tilt and is a fraction of a fraction of what they might need - but even if AZ were to start shipping to the EU from the UK guess what will happen at the border?

Going down this route is pretty fruitless stuff that will do nothing but create a lot of negative feeling that will have long term impacts for all concerned. India were threatening last year to withold exports of certain medicines until it was pointe dout to them that Pharma would move long term production to other countries if that were to happen

[tc27]

This could get nasty.

I don't know what sort of capacity they think they could take from the UK even if that is the case. It's running full tilt and is a fraction of a fraction of what they might need - but even if AZ were to start shipping to the EU from the UK guess what will happen at the border?

Going down this route is pretty fruitless stuff that will do nothing but create a lot of negative feeling that will have long term impacts for all concerned. India were threatening last year to withold exports of certain medicines until it was pointe dout to them that Pharma would move long term production to other countries if that were to happen

Yes there is no way politically the UK would allow vaccines from its quota to leave the country - then I suppose the EU would retaliate by blocking the export of PZ vaccines from Belgium. They are a much smaller part of the UK portfolio now than a few week ago but people will need second shots.

[Saint]

This could get nasty.

I don't know what sort of capacity they think they could take from the UK even if that is the case. It's running full tilt and is a fraction of a fraction of what they might need - but even if AZ were to start shipping to the EU from the UK guess what will happen at the border?

Going down this route is pretty fruitless stuff that will do nothing but create a lot of negative feeling that will have long term impacts for all concerned. India were threatening last year to withold exports of certain medicines until it was pointe dout to them that Pharma would move long term production to other countries if that were to happen

Yes there is no way politically the UK would allow vaccines from its quota to leave the country - then I suppose the EU would retaliate by blocking the export of PZ vaccines from Belgium. They are a much smaller part of the UK portfolio now than a few week ago but people will need second shots.

That would then fall under the criteria of "emergency second dose from a different vaccine". I can guarantee that the UK gov would take that approach.

[Lemoentjie]

Germany demanding that the EU block all export of covid vaccines, so that the EU can get it's fair share...

CDU getting nervous about election in 2021. So predictable. In the German media the vaccination program is seen as a laughing stock, especially when Germans consider themselves superior in organisation to Yanks and Brits.

[Glaston]

Germany demanding that the EU block all export of covid vaccines, so that the EU can get it's fair share...

CDU getting nervous about election in 2021. So predictable. In the German media the vaccination program is seen as a laughing stock, especially when Germans consider themselves superior in organisation to Yanks and Brits.

Berlin Airport !!!
Even Germans piss themselves laughing at their own incompetence over that.

[fishfoodie]

Germany demanding that the EU block all export of covid vaccines, so that the EU can get it's fair share...

CDU getting nervous about election in 2021. So predictable. In the German media the vaccination program is seen as a laughing stock, especially when Germans consider themselves superior in organisation to Yanks and Brits.

Berlin Airport !!!
Even Germans piss themselves laughing at their own incompetence over that.

Do you really want to start throwing stones ?

Two words.

Chris
Grayling

[PCPhil]

CDU getting nervous about election in 2021. So predictable. In the German media the vaccination program is seen as a laughing stock, especially when Germans consider themselves superior in organisation to Yanks and Brits.

Berlin Airport !!!
Even Germans piss themselves laughing at their own incompetence over that.

Do you really want to start throwing stones ?

Two words.

Chris
Grayling

Now what a fine export that would be.

[FalseBayFC]

Sahpra announces controlled compassionate access to Ivermectin

Cape Town – South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra) has announced it will allow a controlled compassionate use of Ivermectin to treat Covid-19.

The health product regulator says it will unveil the access protocols for the drug in the coming days.

The announcement was made during a press announcement in collaboration with the National Press Club on Wednesday.

https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa ... 5fed2aa4e8

Treating a virus with a drug designed to kill parasites. All based on the say-so of one Yank quack. Ok.

"“This does not mean that our position changes around the lack of availability of scientific data surrounding Ivermectin and Covid19...."

I am working with many families in CT with dying relatives. They come from very impoverished areas, most die at home. We're desperate, vaccine will come next year for most. What do you propose?