The head of AstraZeneca says that “the vaccine has a future” after the setbacks

AstraZeneca chief executive has insisted his Covid-19 vaccine has a future, as he revealed the UK had priority access to the puncture and attacked “armchair generals” behind “traumatic” attacks on the company.

In his first interview after a series of setbacks, including the occurrence of rare fatal side effects, Pascal Soriot defended the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine and offered new evidence that could play an important role in the ongoing battle against the disease.

Soriot told the Financial Times that the puncture was only slightly less effective against the variant first found in India than the strain identified in Kent and said that in animal studies a new booster had performed well against others. variants. AstraZeneca is in talks with governments, including the UK, on ​​new booster dose contracts, he said.

Soriot commented for the first time since the European Commission took legal action for an AstraZeneca delivery deficit, saying: “You can look at the half-empty glass: we have delivered less than we expected to deliver in Europe. You can see the glass half full: we have administered more than 400 m of dose [worldwide] and we have saved tens of thousands of lives. “

“I’m European, so I love Europe, don’t get me wrong,” he said. “But in the end, Europe is part of the world, not the whole world. And there are a lot of countries in the world that really want this vaccine, so this vaccine has a future. “

He suggested that the slower deployment of mass vaccination in Europe was not the fault of AstraZeneca, but due to a less aggressive investment. The United States has “a high vaccination rate, but they don’t have our vaccine. So if our vaccine is the problem in Europe, can you tell me how the United States has achieved such a high vaccination rate? “He said.

The EU has been frustrated because it has suffered a supply deficit when the UK has failed to do so. Soriot revealed that the British government had been given priority in the supply of vaccines as part of the agreement it signed with Oxford University in exchange for an investment, before AstraZeneca joined as a partner. development to manufacture and distribute the vaccine.

“Of course, when you do something like government, you don’t do it for free,” he said. “What you want in return, and it’s fair enough, is a priority.”

The UK government, he said, had done “a great deal of work with vaccinations”, most importantly by appointing “a professional”, venture capitalist Kate Bingham, to lead the working group tasked with acquiring the vaccines. vaccines: “Not a purchasing manager who would negotiate price or enter numbers into spreadsheets. Someone who knew the industry,” he added.

He refused to ask whether the EU – which had set up a joint vaccine-buying system run by European Commission officials and member states – should have followed the same strategy.

Soriot also refrained from directly criticizing rival vaccine manufacturers such as Pfizer and Moderna, some of which forecast revenue of tens of billions of dollars this year alone.

“We wanted to provide this vaccine without any benefit because we saw, as an industry, that we shouldn’t see ourselves as taking advantage of this kind of pandemic,” he said.

After explaining that two-thirds of AstraZeneca’s vaccine supply will go to low- and middle-income countries, he said: “Pfizer is focusing on the United States and Europe and some other countries, and hopefully soon, they will also supply the poorest countries. ”

With a lower rate of efficacy in clinical trials and concerns about side effects, some countries have begun to launch the AstraZeneca vaccine as a poor relationship with rivals. But Soriot insisted that evidence of efficacy collected in studies after vaccine approval showed it had “exactly the same result” as the BioNTech / Pfizer coup.

He said the company has not decided what to do with the long-term vaccine. AstraZeneca did not have a traditional vaccine business before the pandemic, selling only a nasal flu vaccine spray.

“I originally hoped we already knew, but we’ve had a lot to do and we’re sure we’ve had some setbacks,” he said. “You can’t say ‘we’ll be on vaccines,’ like that. You have to think, ‘Okay, do I have the right technologies? Will it make sense? Is it a good use of our capital in the face of all the opportunities we have in oncology?'”

He No 61-year-old French executive said that by delivering the non-profit vaccine, he hoped to do well and improve the image of the industry.

But the plan had been interrupted by “bad luck” and “people who don’t understand things,” he said. Back in AstraZeneca’s Cambridge office, after running the company via A Zoom from Australia for many months, he said the attacks he had received had been “traumatic”.

“People are just trying to do what they can. They are simply trying to produce a life-saving vaccine. It’s that simple. And then, to be criticized every day, sometimes the fair criticism, sometimes of the chair generals who think of everything, is really discouraging, ”he said.

“Because I’m a big boy, I’ve been criticized so many times in my life for enduring this, and my grandson is proud of me, so that’s the only thing that matters,” Soriot added. “But we have thousands of people working on it. . . And I’m not exaggerating, people have dedicated their lives to this for several months, so receiving all this criticism is, of course, discouraging. Then, you might think, we could have saved ourselves that, but then you have to remember the impact we’re having. And the impact we are having is thousands and thousands of lives saved. “

Soriot admitted an “own goal,” when the U.S. trial’s data security control board accused the company of publishing outdated information, suggesting it had massed the results. AstraZeneca staff had simulated what the final data would look like, but had forgotten to inform the board.

“It’s not normally necessary, but for education and good practice, they should have told them,” he said. “People have worked so hard, I was tired and running.”

Soriot faced a major investor opposite reaction earlier this month, when about 40% of shareholders voted against a package of payments worth up to £ 15.4 million, with half linked to share price performance.

Noting that he came “from a very modest family. . . So I know we all make a lot of money, ”said Soriot, who needed to make changes to the company’s long-term incentive structure to attract high-caliber candidates. AstraZeneca was well below the “global pharmaceutical benchmark,” with other companies, including UK-based pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, granting much higher long-term incentive subsidies.

“So people have done everything about me, and of course it affects me, but it was important to order politics so I could attract talent to replace me, but also to recruit people into the world. [senior executive team],” added.

As for his own future, Soriot only said he would retire “at the right time,” but made it clear that the board’s planning was underway for his departure and that of the other two leaders of the board. company, President Leif Johansson and Chief Financial Officer Marc Dunoyer. . “We have an agreed sequence of when each of us will retire,” he said.

Soriot, who turns 62 on Sunday, reflected on a year in which his company received continued criticism over the vaccine’s missteps, but consolidated its position as one of the world’s most successful pharmaceutical companies with a portfolio of box office cancer drugs. “The best thing about aging is that you have scars like an old soldier. . . The question is, in the direction of travel, does it go up in general? And I think we are. ”