AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot interview about deliveries to the EU

AstraZeneca’s CEO Pascal Soriot has defended the delayed rollout of the coronavirus vaccine to the EU, saying the drugmaker is “working 24/7” to solve manufacturing problems. But he also noted that the EU had ordered three months ahead of the UK, and this meant it was lagging behind in resolving delivery issues.

The EU has reacted angrily to a delay in AstraZeneca’s delivery of the coronavirus vaccine, which is expected to be approved by the European drug regulator by the end of the week, to the block.

The 27-member block was expecting about 80 million doses of the shot at the end of March, but is now reported to receive only about 31 million doses. With member states struggling to access vaccine supplies and rollout attempts, the EU has said it could restrict exports of Covid-19 vaccines made in the EU.

Speaking with Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Soriot said delays in the delivery of his coronavirus vaccine were caused by a variety of manufacturing issues.

“We think we’ve solved those issues, but we’re actually two months behind where we wanted to be,” he said

The British-Swedish drug company also had “teething troubles like this in the UK supply chain,” Soriot noted, but since the UK contract was signed three months before the European vaccination deal, the company had “an additional three months to deal with all the failures we have. encountered. “

However, he said AstraZeneca still planned to deliver much of the vaccines promised to the EU in February. “But you know, if we deliver what we plan to deliver in February, it’s not a small volume. We plan to deliver millions of doses to Europe, it’s not small,” he told the paper.

When asked what amount the EU could expect, Soriot said that once the vaccine is approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), “we will immediately ship at least 3 million doses to Europe, and we will have another shipment after that. about a week later and then the third or fourth week of February. And the goal is to deliver 17 million doses by February. “

“It’s not as good as we’d like, but it’s really not that bad,” he said. Globally, Soriot said production capacity would reach 100 million doses from February.

On Monday, talks took place between AstraZeneca and the EU, after which EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said the talks “had led to dissatisfaction with the lack of clarity and insufficient explanation”.

The EU has asked AstraZeneca for a detailed plan for vaccine delivery and when distribution will take place, with further talks before Wednesday.

Some countries, including Italy, have threatened legal action against AstraZeneca over the delay. Others have asked why the UK, which relies heavily on the AstraZeneca shot to roll out vaccinations, has jumped ahead in its vaccination schedule and had no supply shortages so far. It has immunized more than 6.8 million people with at least a first dose of the two-dose vaccine.

Soriot said the UK manufacturing plant was more productive and insisted there was no anti-EU context.

“First of all, we have different plants and they have different yields and different productivity. One of the highest yielding plants is in the UK because it started earlier. It also had its own problems but we solved them all. Good productivity but it’s the UK factory because it started earlier. “

“We don’t do it on purpose. I’m European, I have Europe at heart. Our chairman is Swedish, is European. Our CFO is European. Many people in management are European. So we want to treat Europe as well as possible. We can.”

He noted that the drug company had a “best effort” type agreement with the EU as it would have liked to be delivered at the same time as the UK, even if it asked for the vaccine later. “We are not committed to the EU, by the way. It is not a commitment we have to Europe: it is our best attempt.”

With a coronavirus vaccine developed, clinically tested, and approved in less than a year, Soriot said it was normal to experience glitches in the upscaling process.

“We are scaling up at a very high speed to hundreds of millions, billions of doses of vaccines. A year ago we had no vaccine. If you do that, you have malfunctions, you have problems with scaling up.” he said, adding that there are currently problems with the production of the vaccine substance in two European factories.

“For Europe, the drug is essentially produced in two factories, one in the Netherlands and one in Belgium. The drug is actually produced in Italy and Germany. So from a drug product standpoint, we have full capacity. We have no problem.” current problems have to do with the manufacturing of the drug substance, ”he said.