Vaccine Dogfight Puts AstraZeneca in a Hard Spot
The spat could give drugmakers cold feet about chipping in to combat the next big virus.
A hot commodity.
Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/BloombergEven in a pandemic, no good deed goes unpunished. Having embarked on a mission to distribute Oxford University’s Covid-19 vaccine to the world for no profit, AstraZeneca Plc is now caught up in both vaccine politics and Brexit blowback. The Anglo-Swedish drugmaker is in a mire it cannot easily escape on its own. Having come out fighting, it’s now time to de-escalate the situation — and seek support from the U.K. government.
At issue is the supply of the Oxford vaccine to the European Union. Two unfortunate events have coincided to reduce the bloc’s expected dosages in early 2021. At the same time that AstraZeneca has had problems in producing the so-called drug substance that goes into its shots, Pfizer Inc. curtailed its vaccine production to upgrade the efficiency of its manufacturing output.