AstraZeneca is safe and effective ‘but nobody cares’: scientist

London: The EU’s attacks on AstraZeneca call into question the company’s decision not to profit from its vaccine, according to a leading member of the scientific team that delivered the breakthrough.

Sir John Bell, the Oxford University professor who helped mastermind the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine, warned that the company’s morale is being damaged by what he sees as unwarranted criticism of its safety and efficacy.

He said AstraZeneca had “never had credit” for its early decision not to profit from the vaccine and that repeated attacks from the EU and figures including Emmanuel Macron have called it into question.

Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford, says AstraZeneca does not get proper credit for selling at cost price.

Sir John said: “There’s a point at which AstraZeneca could just say you’ve got to be joking, we’re going to stop [charging cost price] now because we’re not getting any credit for what we’re doing. The share price has gone down, not up. We’re making more vaccines than everybody else. This is a safe and effective vaccine, but nobody seems to care.”

He highlighted growing frustration within the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, which is forgoing profits from its vaccine in contrast with rivals such as Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech.

Sir John said: “I haven’t got a problem with people making money but there’s a time and a place. The industry has been saying, look at us. We’ve been great, we’ve saved the world. Well, yes. But you made a tonne of money as well.”

It follows reports that questions were being raised internally at AstraZeneca over whether the company should start charging more.

In response to Sir John’s comments an AstraZeneca spokesman said: “From the outset AstraZeneca’s approach has been to treat the development of the vaccine as a response to a global public health emergency and we continue to operate in that same public spirit.

“We are absolutely committed to make the vaccine available to as many countries as possible at no profit during the period of the pandemic to support broad and equitable access around the world.”

The company pledged to sell the vaccine at prices which just cover its costs for the “duration of the pandemic”, despite the massive demand.

If developed nations offer COVID-19 vaccine doses every year to those who take flu vaccines, pharma companies could be raking in more than $10bn annually, according to figures from Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse.

One major institutional shareholder in AstraZeneca said it had done the right thing by selling the vaccines at no profit, despite an almost 16 per cent decline in its share price in the last six months.

They said: “They’ve been good corporate citizens so it’s churlish to have a go at them. They’ve gained kudos on the back of the whole thing. They’ll probably make money tangentially off the back of [the vaccine].”

However, the shareholder warned that the company kept “screwing up″⁣ data analysis that “weakens their credibility”.

It comes amid an ongoing row in Europe, where confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine has slumped following the move by a number of countries in the continent to suspend its use on reports of blood clotting, against the advice of the EU medicine’s regulator.

Countries including France and Germany later lifted their suspensions after the European Medicines Agency reiterated that the AstraZeneca Oxford vaccine was “safe and effective”.

However, further criticism has focused around supplies of the AstraZeneca jab in the EU, where politicians are under pressure over a slow rollout which has left the continent at risk of a third wave of infections and deaths.

Figures have suggested that less than 13 per cent of the EU population has been vaccinated, compared to almost 45 per cent in the UK.

EU leaders have blamed AstraZeneca for the huge disparity, and have now halted any exports of Europan-made doses to countries with high vaccination rates or local production labs.

The Telegraph, London

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