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AstraZeneca is one of the shining stars of the pandemic. Not only has it produced a vaccine where other big players have failed, but the Anglo-Swedish company has pledged to sell it at cost until it is able to declare the pandemic over.
Since the vials with Astra’s vaccine can be stored in a normal refrigerator, he managed to reduce the cost to around $ 3 (£ 2.20) per injection, compared to the $ 35 charged by the US company Moderna for his vaccine outside the United States.
The low cost is a major advantage, but it goes hand in hand with the vaccine’s ease of transport, which puts it at the top of the list for use in developing countries.
As a result, there is an almost unlimited demand for the vaccine around the world. Astra tried to ramp up production quickly, but ran into problems. This has had some politicians close to foaming in their mouths.
Last week Belgian MEP Philippe Lamberts accused the company of “arrogance” and “dishonesty”. Then came the French Foreign Minister – speaking on national radio, as EU officials have often done in recent months – as if Astra and the British government were one and the same.
Jean-Yves Le Drian has warned that the EU is ready to block Astra vials at the EU border in order to catch up with the UK’s impressive vaccination program. While the UK has enough vaccines to complete the first stage of the vaccination process, Le Drian said it would be difficult to obtain and administer the required second doses unless EU countries do not ‘have better access to Astra production.
This is not the first threat to the UK which treats Astra as if it were a state-owned company; it is just the latest in a series that EU officials hope will force Boris Johnson to wrap up this weekend and agree to share more production.
A good deal is likely after the best efforts of the two UK sites that make the Astra vaccine fall short of expectations. It has proven difficult to expand factories in Keele, Staffordshire and Oxford and marry their work with a factory in Wrexham which completes part of the process. Without the necessary scale on UK soil, the company must rely more than it would on imports to meet its UK contractual arrangements.
But in truth, all pharmaceutical companies making vaccines have struggled to increase production. They all have to reconstitute the manufacture of ready-to-use vials at multiple sites, sometimes in different countries.
Some UK ministers believe EU officials have been emboldened by national pharmaceutical companies, angered by Astra’s promise to sell the vaccine at cost. There is also a suspicion of spite behind concerns about the effectiveness of Astra’s vaccine.
US officials scorned the company for downgrading its overall effectiveness by three percentage points, from 79% to 76%, after taking a closer look at the results of 32,000 people vaccinated. US officials had expressed concerns that the reported results of the US Astra trial were outdated.
But if we look back to last year, governments were applauding any sign of a vaccine that was over 60% effective, and they were all set to roll out programs nationwide with such a drug.
It’s hard to understand the criticism – other than to vent corporate and pent-up nationalist jealousy – when AstraZeneca reports that the study shows the drug remains 100% effective against severe Covid.
The prospect of eight more vaccines by the fall should calm everyone’s nerves, but with soaring infection rates across Europe and vaccine shortages making matters worse, it’s clear that the cooperation across the chain is the only way forward.
Drax’s biomass move won’t bring it out of the woods with climate criticism
The idea that cutting down trees and burning them could be good for the environment goes against all intuitive logic. But that’s exactly the plan proposed by Drax Group, once one of Europe’s most polluting coal-fired power producers, as a response to tackling Britain’s carbon footprint.
Energy company FTSE 250 has regularly converted its coal-fired power plant in North Yorkshire to burn woodchips – known as biomass – instead of fossil fuels. Shipped from the southern states of the United States, the pellets are subsidized by household energy bills to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds each year.
This week, Drax shareholders will vote on whether to move forward with the £ 470million acquisition of a Canadian biomass producer, a deal that would double its consumption of wood pellets.
This is a high-stakes bet on “carbon neutral” biomass playing a major role in the UK’s journey to become a net zero carbon economy. It will also put the company back on a collision course with environmental groups and sustainable investors.
For Drax critics, “carbon accounting” does not add up. They say the theory – that the carbon emissions absorbed by growing trees would effectively offset the carbon released when their wood waste is burned – is flawed because it ignores the time it takes for trees to reach their maximum size and the rate at which energy generators burn biomass. .
Drax countered with peer-reviewed evidence to the contrary. A war of contradictory scientific studies, volleys of open letters and flying counterclaims is brewing.
Shareholders should keep in mind that no matter how much ammunition the company throws in, it will always be where it was at its peak of burning coal: at war with the environmental movement. This hill of pellets may not be worth dying for.
Sunak must lift secrecy on Covid loans
The Chancellor will face tough issues next month when companies start repaying loans that have kept them from going bankrupt over the past year.
Rishi Sunak will have to think about how to aggressively push organizations struggling to make repayments – not easy when UK businesses have borrowed over £ 73bn under Covid-19 programs backed by the government. According to a conservative estimate from the Office of Fiscal Responsibility, at least £ 28 billion will be written off.
But before that, Sunak must reconsider the secrecy surrounding the projects. The government has promised to release the data, after notifying borrowers that their names will be made public. He is obliged to do so, as the loans were granted under EU state aid rules, which require the disclosure of aid worth more than 100,000 euros.
Since February, those who demanded leave have seen their names on published lists. Likewise, the Bank of England, which administers the Covid Finance Facility for Large Businesses, has released details of its loans since June of last year.
The other loans – through the coronavirus business interruption loan program, the coronavirus major business interruption loan program, and “bounce back” loans – have not yet been disclosed.
Labor has stressed how crucial this information is since the relationship between the collapsed financial group Greensill and Liberty Steel emerged. Greensill has reportedly shared several government-guaranteed £ 50million loans for steel magnate Sanjeev Gupta, owner of Liberty Steel, which employs more than 5,000 people. It is reasonable for them – and for the nation – to question how much their employer relies on government loans and whether their jobs have been saved by deals that have manipulated the system.
Ministers must be clear quickly or risk not only violating EU state aid rules, but also carrying out further investigations into Greensill.
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