The recent spectacle surrounding Vaxzevria, the AstraZeneca (LON:AZN) COVID-19 vaccine, could exacerbate vaccine hesitancy, which is significant in many parts of the world. In the U.S., the independent data and safety monitoring board overseeing the Phase 3 trial contacted government authorities with concerns that the summary data were misleading. More recently, the European Medicines Agency (EMA)…
Factory error ruins 15M J&J COVID-19 vaccine doses
Employees at an Emergent BioSolutions (NYSE:EBS) facility in Baltimore made a mistake several weeks ago when formulating the ingredients for Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, requiring 15 million doses of it to be discarded. A quality control process revealed that one batch of a drug substance for the J&J COVID-19 vaccine “did not meet quality…
AstraZeneca doubles down on COVID-19 vaccine performance
After a quarrel with its independent data safety monitoring board, AstraZeneca confirmed that its COVID-19 vaccine offers strong performance in protecting against COVID-19 in a U.S. study. The company announced that the vaccine was 76% effective against symptomatic COVID-19. That figure was three points lower than the percentage it released on Monday. The data safety…
EU threatens to tighten COVID-19 vaccine exports
The European Union announced plans to invoke emergency rules that could substantially reduce exports to the United Kingdom and other countries for six weeks. AstraZeneca, a central provider of vaccines to the European Union, had reduced EU projected shipments to the EU after encountering production delays at plants in Belgium and the Netherlands. AstraZeneca will…
An overview of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine saga
Over the past several months, AstraZeneca has struggled to win broad support for its vaccine, which it jointly developed with Oxford University. In the past several months, a series of bruising headlines have put the company on the defensive, forcing the company to issue a series of statements answering questions over its vaccine data. The…
WHO: AstraZeneca vaccine pauses in EU unwarranted
The World Health Organization endorsed the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine after several European countries have halted its use over potential safety risks. AstraZeneca has observed 15 deep vein thrombosis (DVT) reports and 22 pulmonary embolism (PE) cases out of 17 million vaccine recipients in the E.U. and U.K. as of March 8. Based on that data,…
Amid controversy, Biden cancels Emergent Biosolutions visit
The White House scrapped plans to hold a meeting today at a Baltimore-based vaccine plant run by Emergent BioSolutions following an exposé from The New York Times. The Biden administration also announced plans to conduct an audit of the Strategic National Stockpile after the publication of the article, which described how the biopharmaceutical company lobbied…
Which companies will likely produce the most COVID-19 vaccine in 2021?
Since the beginning of the pandemic, much of society has pinned its hopes on the availability of a vaccine. Now that several are available across the world, there is hope, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, in a recent JAMA interview. “There’s light at the end of the tunnel.” One thing that…
EU chief reports ‘step forward’ in AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine supply dispute
AstraZeneca (LON:AZN) will provide the EU an extra 9 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to help resolve a supply dispute that also involves the U.K., according to media reports. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen yesterday described the agreement as a “step forward,” according to NPR. The extra doses bring the total amount…
8 hurdles related to COVID-19 vaccine distribution
While vaccines remain the most powerful tool in achieving herd immunity for COVID-19, mass-vaccination has thus far proven more challenging than anticipated in many parts of the world. There are expected challenges, such as dealing with the subarctic storage requirements (–112º to –76º F) of the BNT162b2 vaccine from Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and BioNTech (NSDQ:BNTX). But…