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REUTERS: A summer drop in coronavirus infections in the UK has delayed test results for AstraZenca’s potential COVID-19 vaccine, prompting the drugmaker to delay deliveries of injections to the government of the United Kingdom.
Britain’s vaccine chief said on Wednesday that it would receive just 4 million doses of the potential vaccine this year, against initial estimates of 30 million for Sept. 30.
AstraZeneca said Thursday that it was delaying deliveries while waiting for data from late-stage clinical trials to maximize the shelf life of supplies.
You keep the vaccine frozen in large containers and you will only add a final ingredient, put it in vials, and keep it at refrigerator temperature when the vaccine approaches approval.
“We were a little late for deliveries, so the vaccine has been kept frozen,” CEO Pascal Soriot said on a conference call.
However, he added that AstraZeneca was “fully” prepared to launch the vaccine when it is ready, adding that the company’s weekly delivery schedule should roughly match what the UK government has in mind for its vaccination plans.
AstraZeneca and its partner in the project, the University of Oxford, said the data from the late-stage trials should land this year. If successful, the pair will apply for emergency approvals in as many countries as possible at the same time, Soriot said.
The British duo are competing with Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna and others to publish the first detailed results of large COVID-19 vaccine trials. A vaccine is considered the world’s best bet to fight a pandemic that has caused more than 1.2 million deaths, shaken economies and disrupted billions of lives.
Earlier this year, AstraZeneca also agreed to begin supplying millions of doses by the end of 2020 to the United States, the European Union, and the poorest nations through the epidemic response group CEPI and the GAVI vaccine alliance, subject to the test results and regulatory approval.
The company expects the injection to be effective for at least a year, but only test data can confirm this.
MIXED RESULTS
While working on the vaccine, AstraZeneca is also making progress on its portfolio of other drugs.
On Thursday, the company said that two of its top drugs, the cancer treatment Lynparza and the diabetes drug Forxiga, had been approved for wider use in Europe.
For the third quarter, product sales of $ 6.52 billion exceeded the company-compiled consensus of $ 6.5 billion. The number excluded collaborative payments.
However, basic earnings of 94 cents a share for the three months ended September 30 fell short of analysts’ expectations of 98 cents.
Research and development costs rose 11 percent to $ 1.5 billion, as more projects moved to the final stage of human testing, usually the most expensive.
The company said it still expected total revenue in 2020 to increase by a high single-digit percentage to a low double-digit percentage and for basic earnings per share to increase by a medium to high percentage of teens.
