AstraZeneca is one of the bright stars of the pandemic. Not only has it made vaccinations where other major players have failed, the UK-Swedish company has promised to sell at a cost so that they can name the pandemic.
Because the filters containing the Astra vaccine can be kept in a conventional cooler, they have been able to reduce the cost to around $ 3 (£ 2.20) a bullet, compared to the $ 35 offered by Moderna. USA for the vaccine outside the United States.
One big advantage is the low cost, but it is so easy to carry the vaccine, which puts it at the top of the list for use in developing countries.
As a result, there is almost unlimited demand for the vaccine from all over the world. Astra has been trying to produce quickly, but has run into problems. This has led some politicians to close their mouths.
Last week our Belgian MEP Philippe Lamberts accused the company of “arrogance” and “dishonesty”. Then came the French foreign minister – speaking on national radio, as EU officials have often over the past few months – as if Astra and the UK government were the same.
Jean-Yves Le Drian warned that the EU was willing to ban Astra vials at the EU border to catch up with the UK’s impressive vaccination program. Although the UK has enough vaccines to complete the first stage of the vaccination process, Le Drian said it would be difficult for them to get and administer the required second doses if EU countries did not have greater access to a product. Astra.
This is not the first threat to the UK treating Astra as if it were a state-owned enterprise; it is just the latest in a series that EU officials hope will force Boris Johnson to buckle this weekend and agree to share more of the results.
There is likely to be some sort of bargain after the best efforts from the two UK sites making the Astra vaccine failed as expected. It has been difficult to grow the plants in Keele, Staffordshire, and Oxford and marry the work with a plant in Wrexham that will complete part of the process. Without the scale required on British soil, the company will have to rely more than they would like on imports to meet UK contractual arrangements.
But in reality, every pharmaceutical industry that makes vaccines has struggled to ramp up production. They all have to do arm-ready filter manufacturing across multiple sites, sometimes in different countries.
Some UK ministers believe domestic pharma companies have spurred EU officials, outraged by Astra’s promise to sell the vaccine at a cost. There are also suspicions despite concerns about the effectiveness of the Astra vaccine.
U.S. officials have slammed the company for reviewing down three percentage points on their overall efficiency, from 79% to 76%, after taking a closer look at results from 32,000 people who received the vaccine. American authorities had raised concerns that the results reported from the U.S. Astra test were outdated.
But if we go back to last year, governments chewed any sign of a vaccine that was more than 60% effective, and they were all willing to roll out national programs with such a drug.
The criticism is hard to understand – except as a way to reverse pent-up physical and national jealousy – when AstraZeneca reports that the study shows that the drug is still 100% effective in the Covid hard face.
Eight more vaccines in the autumn should be expected to calm everyone’s nerves, but with disease rates soaring across Europe and a shortage of vaccines making the situation worse. Worse, it is clear that channel – wide collaboration is the only way forward.
Drax’s biological movement out of the woods won’t take it by climate critics
The idea that felling trees and burning them may be good for the environment goes against all intuitive reasoning. But this is exactly the plan put forward by Drax Group, one of the most polluting coal – fired power generators in Europe, in response to Britain ‘s carbon footprint.
The energy company FTSE 250 has gradually transformed its coal-fired power plant in North Yorkshire to burn wood chips – known as biofuels – instead of fossil fuels. Shipped from the southern states of the U.S., the damsels are subsidized through domestic energy bills to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds each year.
This week, Drax shareholders will vote on whether to move forward by receiving £ 470m from a Canadian biology producer, a contract that will double the consumption of wood pellets.
It is a high bet that carbon-neutral biology will play a key role in the UK’s journey to becoming a zero-carbon economy. It will also put the company back on track with environmental groups and sustainable investors.
For Drax critics the “carbon accounting” is not coming up. They say the theory is that the carbon emissions absorbed by growing trees would effectively degrade the carbon released when their waste wood will be incinerated – faulty as it avoids the time it takes for trees to reach full size and the speed at which power generators burn biofuels.
Drax has contradicted peer-reviewed evidence. A war of controversial scientific studies, volleys of open letters and flying counterclaims is breaking out.
Shareholders should keep in mind that no matter what weapon the company throws, it will still be exactly where it was in its coal burning day: at war with the movement of the environment. It may not be worth dying for this mound of bullets.
Sunak needs to raise secrets about Covid’s loan
The chancellor will have some difficult cases next month as businesses begin to repay the loans they have saved from going wrong over the past year.
Rishi Sunak needs to consider how aggressive it is to push groups struggling to repay – that is not easy when UK businesses have borrowed more than £ 73bn through government – backed Covid-19 schemes. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that at least £ 28bn will be written off.
But before that, Sunak must reconsider the secrecy surrounding the schemes. The government has promised to release the data, after informing lenders that their names will be published. It is incumbent on this to do so, as the loans were provided under EU state aid rules, which require the disclosure of support in excess of € 100,000.
Since February, those who have applied for hard money have seen their names on published lists. Similarly, the Bank of England, which manages Covid’s corporate financing facility for larger companies, has released information about their loans since June last year.
Other loans – through the coronavirus business bankruptcy loan scheme, the coronavirus large business bankruptcy loan scheme and “kick back” loans – have not yet been announced.
Labor has emphasized the importance of this information since the emergence of the relationship between Greensill and Liberty Steel. Greensill is understood to have secured several £ 50m government-backed loans for steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta, owner of Liberty Steel, which employs more than 5,000 people. It is reasonable for them – and for the country – to question the extent to which their employer is dependent on government loans, and whether their jobs were saved by contracts that handled the system.
Ministers need to come clean soon or risk not only breaches of EU state aid rules, but also further investigations into Greensill.