Thought of the Day - February 15 - Vaccine Wars - It's a Madhouse

Vaccine Approvals (& Politics):

It has been a wild two weeks, as more countries negotiate the politics and declare their hands.

• The Convidicea vaccine from China's Cansino has been added to the list. It has now been approved by Mexico;

• Last month Pakistan was on the list of those countries approving Pfizer but it looks like this approval has been delayed;

• Hong Kong approved Pfizer back in January, and, despite a contract for delivery at the end of January, has yet to approve Sinovac. Macau, on the other hand, has just approved Sinopharm;

• Hungary has broken ranks with the EU first approving Sputnik V and now Sinopharm;

• Turkmenistan, one of only two countries that have not reported any cases (other than really remote islands), has now approved COVID vaccines, Sputnik V and EpiVacCorona;

• Here in Canada, it looks like we will potentially approve AstraZeneca’s Covishield vaccine this week. The debate is underway whether 20M Covishield doses will be supplied from India or the US - not to be confused with the 1.1M Covidshield orders that will come from South Korea under COVAX program, or the crazy story of 12M doses in storage in Dubai;

• The UK medical journal The Lancet, which has been in the thick of it with COVID, has published an article on the Gamaleya Gam-COVID-Vac vaccine, aka Sputnik V. This is the first major western journal that has covered Sputnik. The article is titled "Sputnik V COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate Appears Safe and Effective" and concludes that trial results show a consistent strong protective effect across all participant age groups. While it is unlikely that Canada will consider its use, this is good news for the rest of the world.

Vaccine Contracts:

• In 2020 the EU has signed contracts with Oxford/AstraZeneca, Sanofi/GSK, Janssen/J&J, BioNtech/Pfizer, as well as CureVac, another mRNA vaccine candidate. Now, with Sanofi off the table, GlaxoSmithKline(GSK) has moved over to the CureVac camp, along with Bayer, to speed things along;

• Redacted copies of vaccine contracts signed by the EU, Israel and the US are now in circulation. Along with claims that poor redaction techniques mean that so are "confidential" parts of those contracts. Canada has yet to follow suit;

• Canada has signed a deal with Novavax to make COVID-19 vaccine in Montreal;

• Manitoba became the first province to publicly break from the national procurement process announcing an agreement to buy a vaccine candidate under development in Calgary. Providence Therapeutics, which has just begun Phase 1 trials of its mRNA vaccine candidate, said it will partner with a manufacturing company in Manitoba.

Vaccine Deployment:

• South Africa has halted the rollout of AstraZeneca amid concerns that the vaccine is ineffective against their 501Y variant. In response, AstraZeneca announced they will have a new version of its COVID-19 vaccine ready for use by this autumn;

• Supply problem solved: Health Canada has agreed that will allow six doses of Pfizer vaccine to be extracted per vial (up until now Canada has been achieving only five doses) - presto, no more shortage;

• In an effort to ramp-up delivery, provinces are starting to announce COVID vaccine clinics. BC suggests this will happen before the arrival of Phase 3 in April.

Cheers

Cliff