AstraZeneca ALREADY manufacturing Covid vaccine in three countries

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A British pharmaceutical giant is already manufacturing an unproven coronavirus vaccine as it hopes to dish out hundreds of millions of doses by September.

AstraZeneca has started to mass-produce the experimental AZD1222 jab, developed by Oxford University, at factories in India, Oxford, Switzerland and Norway.

The Cambridge-based firm expects to have distributed hundreds of millions of doses of the vaccine this year and at least 2billion by mid-2021.

It has signed deals to produce 400million doses for the US and 100million for the UK if it is successful in human trials. Results are expected in August. 

Britain has agreed to pay for the doses ‘as early as possible’ – with ministers hoping for a third of those to be ready for September if proven effective. 

Following an initial phase of testing on 160 healthy volunteers between 18 and 55, the study of AZD1222 has moved to phases two and three.

It will involve increasing the testing to up to 10,260 people and expanding the age range of volunteers to include children and the elderly. 

AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, said he believes there will be ‘several’ Covid vaccines ready for mass-use this year

Pascal Soriot, chief executive of AstraZeneca, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘We are starting to manufacture this vaccine right now. And we have to have it ready to be used by the time we have the results.

‘Of course, with this decision comes a risk but it is a financial risk and that financial risk is that if the vaccine doesn’t work.

‘We will find this out at the end of August, then all the materials, all the vaccines we have manufactured will be wasted.’

WHAT IS THE OXFORD VACCINE?

The vaccine is called AZD1222 and is made from a weakened version of a common cold virus (adenovirus) from chimpanzees that has been genetically changed so it is impossible for it to grow in humans.

The intellectual rights to its vaccine are owned by the University of Oxford and a spin-out company called Vaccitech. 

Clinical teams at the Oxford University’s Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group began developing the vaccine in January.  

It’s a type of immunisation known as a recombinant viral vector vaccine. 

Researchers place genetic material from the coronavirus into another virus that’s been modified. They will then inject the virus into a human, hoping to produce an immune response against SARS-CoV-2. 

This virus, weakened by genetic engineering, is a type of virus called an adenovirus, the same as those which cause common colds, that has been taken from chimpanzees. 

If the vaccines can successfully mimic the spikes inside a person’s bloodstream, and stimulate the immune system to create special antibodies to attack it, this could train the body to destroy the real coronavirus if they get infected with it in future.

It was developed so rapidly by Sarah Gilbert, a professor of vaccinology, and her team because they already had a base vaccine for similar coronaviruses. 

The team have gone through stages of vaccine development that usually take five years in just four months.  

However, Professor Gilbert said that none of the normal safety steps had been missed out.   

He said AstraZeneca would make no profit from the supply of the vaccine, adding: ‘We felt that there are times in life that corporations need to step up and contribute to resolving a big problem like this one, so decided to do it at no profit.’

However this will only last until the World Health Organization (WHO) officially brings the crisis down from the level of ‘global pandemic’.

Estimates suggests the world will need around 4.5billion vaccine doses to put an end to the pandemic. 

The virus is so hard to track and spreads so easily that experts believe it will continue to spread through the human population indefinitely, if a vaccine cannot be found. 

AstraZeneca announced a deal last week with Oxford BioMedica to manufacture the Covid vaccine at its manufacturing centre in Oxford.

AstraZeneca will have access to the company’s 84,000-square-foot factory and will turn out most of the clinical and commercial supply of the vaccine this year. 

Mr Soriot also announced a licensing deal with the Serum Institute of India to provide 1billion doses of the vaccine to low- and middle-income countries by 2021. The goal will be to manufacture 400 million doses in its factory by the end of 2020.

And today AstraZeneca signed a deal with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi) in Norway and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, in Switzerland.

The companies will help manufacture 300million globally accessible doses of the coronavirus vaccine this year.

But a leading member of the Oxford University trial of AZD1222 has warned the study has only a 50 per cent chance of being successfully completed.

Lower transmission of the coronavirus in the community means it will be harder for trial participants to catch the virus, and for scientists to see if the vaccine is protective.   

Oxford University’s Jenner Institute and the Oxford Vaccine Group began development on a vaccine in January, using a virus taken from chimpanzees.

Professor Adrian Hill, director of Oxford University’s Jenner Institute, said he expected fewer than 50 of those to catch the virus. The results could be deemed useless if fewer than 20 test positive.

‘We said earlier in the year that there was an 80 per cent chance of developing an effective vaccine by September,’ he told The Sunday Telegraph.

‘But at the moment, there’s a 50 per cent chance that we get no result at all.

‘We’re in the bizarre position of wanting Covid to stay, at least for a little while. But cases are declining.’

If SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease COVID-19, is not spreading in the community, volunteers will find it difficult to catch, meaning scientists can’t prove whether the vaccine actually makes any difference.