I can't remember exact values but my guess is this friction comes from the price point.
AZ was negotiated at something like less than 2 euros per shot for EU markets, and the Pfizer contracts varied wildly for different countries but it was negotiated at about 15 euros per shot for EU.
With my cynical hat on if you are having to vaccinate millions that order of magnitude difference probably matters.
What I haven't seen anyone discuss at the EC level is what would be the maths of just paying premium Israel prices for the Pfizer vaccine?
Would the economic benefits of get out of this mess as quickly as possible outweigh the extra euros per shot spent on vaccination. My guess is it would likely pay off but then again I am not a European Commissioner.
I remember the exact values, at least the ones published on public media (German ZDF):
The negotiation wasn't about the purchasing prise of a shot, but about the price to "reserve a shot". Germany spent ca. 4€ per capita on "reserving an AZ shot", which adds up to a total spending of ca. 350M€.
Just to have a comparison:
- Last time I bought a beer in a pub in Munich a paid more than 4€
- Just last week Germany spent 1.7B€ on a Syrian topic, which obviously won't change anything, neither for Syria, nor for Germany
- The lockdown - ongoing since November - costs 3 to 4B€ per week
The only one acting not like a moron in this situation is AZ: selling the vaccine to whoever pays the highest price. If the German politicians could pay the highest price, but doesn't want to, whose fault is that?
Funny fact: a friend of mine gets paid to support German R&D on measuring COVID concentration in the sewers to develop an early-warning-system. He says this money should be used to buy vaccines instead of founding some random R&D.
>> selling the vaccine to whoever pays the highest price
It does not appear the AZ are shipping vaccine to customers based on price. We know that Pfizer are, which is why Israel has been able to pay them a premium to get vaccines first.
Rather, AZ appear to have set up manufacturing dedicated to particular contracts - for instance separate manufacturing in the EU, manufacturing in the UK, manufacturing in the US, and manufacturing in Latin America. They seem to have written contracts that say 'you get what your dedicated manufacturing produces'.
The dispute between the EU and AZ is about whether the UK counts as being in the EU - in my opinion AZ appear to have taken money from the UK to build factories there, included those factories in the EU's contracted dedicated manufacturing when they should not have, and then refused to give the EU the vaccines from these factories.
This became relevant because AZ manufacturing yields are lower than expected - less vaccine than expected is being produced for a given amount of manufacturing capacity - so the bugs in their contractual arrangements have become visible.
So, I agree that AZ screwed up, but I disagree with your model of why.
> They seem to have written contracts that say 'you get what your dedicated manufacturing produces'.
It came a couple of weeks ago in the news that 29M AZ shots, hidden in an Italian harbour, waiting to be shipped out of Europe, were found by the authorities. As I said -> selling the vaccine to whoever pays the highest price.
These are murky waters - I don't believe anyone involved.
To correct what you wrote, they were found in a warehouse at a bottling plant, not a harbor, and half of them were COVAX shots that had been produced by the South American supply chain and had just come through Europe for bottling and QC.
The other half were EU shots - held back because the EU had not yet given regulatory approval to the bottling plant.
The allegation, made by un-named sources, is that AZ were deliberately delayed this regulatory approval, presumably by being slow to file paperwork. As there is obvious hostility towards AZ, it is also possible factors on the EU side were causing a delay.
I would say that, having raided a factory with great fanfair looking undeclared stockpiles, saying you found one, and then discovering it was declared and all above board, one way out of the PR problem would be to anonymously make an allegation like that. On the other hand, maybe it's true. Who knows.
With that said... once you start thinking AZ are secretly holding vaccines back to smuggle out of Europe like some Columbian cartel, you are well into QAnon teritory. They would be risking a lot to do that - they are already facing so much for failing to meet a contract, actually smuggling drugs would destory the company. Why would they do it?
AZ was negotiated at something like less than 2 euros per shot for EU markets, and the Pfizer contracts varied wildly for different countries but it was negotiated at about 15 euros per shot for EU.
With my cynical hat on if you are having to vaccinate millions that order of magnitude difference probably matters.
What I haven't seen anyone discuss at the EC level is what would be the maths of just paying premium Israel prices for the Pfizer vaccine?
Would the economic benefits of get out of this mess as quickly as possible outweigh the extra euros per shot spent on vaccination. My guess is it would likely pay off but then again I am not a European Commissioner.