Pfizer cuts vaccine supply. According to "Sputnik" there is a mystery

It's a yellow and it's called Pfizer. Behind the announcement of Friday 14 January with which the manufacturing company informed that it was forced to reduce by 29 percent vaccine doses distributed in Europe (165 thousand doses less for Italy) a mystery is hidden. That mystery brings Joe Biden and his new anti-Covid plans into play on the one hand, and on the other hand the revelations about the Pfizer vaccine that emerged after a hacker group raided the digital archives of the EMA, the European Medicines Agency.

In both cases, Pfizer's inability to meet its promises and Europe's excessive dependence on the US pharmaceutical company would emerge. But let's start with the two possible explanations for the delay. The first is linked to the new 20 billion dollar vaccination plan with which, on Friday the 14th, Joe Biden he promised to Americans 100 million vaccinations in the first hundred days of his mandate. It is clear that that acceleration, in addition to the billions put on the table by the incoming president, could have led Pfizer's top management to neglect Europe to ensure that the new administration has an eye on it.

A second hypothesis, more worrying, instead attributes the delays to the need to improve the production lines to ensure industrial production with the same levels of effectiveness promised in the experimental phase. And given that Pfizer explains the slowdown in deliveries precisely with the need to modernize the Puurs plant from which the doses destined for the United States and Europe come out, one wonders whether the consignments delivered so far guarantee the initially promised effectiveness.

The developments of the sensational theft of documents on 9 December contribute to fueling the doubts when one, or more, hackers stole a series of documents from the EMA digital archives. Many of those documents concerned the Pfizer vaccine validation process. Part of the loot, including 20 articles and 19 emails sent between EMA officials, it resurfaced in early January from the folds of the so-called "dark web" (the part of the Net not accessible with normal providers) and was recovered and analyzed - among others - by journalists of the investigative portal "Behind the Pledge". While the EMA claims that the emails could have been manipulated before being put online, the group of journalists, in agreement with the newspaper Le Monde, defines them authentic.

 

According to the emails, some industrial batches of the vaccine examined by the EMA at the time contained percentages lower than the 59% of "intact" RNA and therefore the samples examined during clinical trials containing between 69 and 81% of RNA would not be up to par. That discrepancy between experimental tests and industrial production is defined as "critical" in a November 23 email signed by an EMA official. And to make everything more worrying, the passages of other emails allude to possible pressure from the European Commission to speed up the approval of the vaccine. Pressures probably justified by the Covid emergency, but worrying if it turns out that only the improvements to the Puurs production lines could compensate for those problems. Also because there was news of the improvements only after the appearance of the documents on the web. However, at the origin of everything there is the failure of a European programming based on the agreements for the purchase of the vaccine and the financing of research signed by the EU Commission with six pharmaceutical companies (Pfizer-BioNtech, Moderna, Astra-Zeneca, Sanofi/Gsk, Curevac and Johnson & Johnson).

Despite those agreements, Europe found itself depending only on Pfizer for the initial phase. This excessive dependence may have prompted the EMA, also at the request of the Commission, to overlook some inadequacies in the production of the first batches of vaccine. But even the decision to focus on a product intended to serve – in addition to Europe – an American market of 328 million inhabitants has inevitably created an excess of dependence. A dependency that risks creating serious consequences if the increase in demand impressed by Joe Biden combined with the modernization of production lines creates further supply problems. Also because the postponement of the approval of Astra Zeneca, the departure of Sanofi and the delays of Curevac and Johnson & Johnson risk forcing us to depend on Pfizer and Moderna for many more months.

On the other hand, all these factors taken together help us understand why on 6 January Chancellor Angela Merkel announced her willingness to collaborate with Moscow to get to the production of the much reviled Russian vaccine "Sputnik V" in European plants. Aware not only of the inadequate planning put in place by the Commission, but also of the problems that arose during the approval phase of the vaccine and of the imminent fight with the USA for hoarding the doses, the Chancellor understood that collaboration with Moscow was evil minor.

The views and opinions expressed in the article do not necessarily coincide with those of Sputnik.