[Peter Dow (OP)]

My new blog post
The vaccine roll-out is too slow. Let’s increase vaccine supply with new production facilities.


The UK's vaccination programme could and should have vaccinated the entire UK population by now if vaccine production and supply had been ramped up appropriately considering the urgency of the pandemic.

The governments should greatly accelerate the production and supply of the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine (which seems to be the best of the 2 from the Public Health Scotland supported research into vaccine performance in Scotland) under license by investing in new facilities, including one here in Scotland to make say +250,000 doses/day for Scots initially then for export.

Please support my call for a new 250,000 doses/day vaccine production facility in Scotland – with further doses to be exported after all Scots have been fully vaccinated.

Likewise, I can be relied upon to support any call for additional vaccine production capacity to be built elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

It seems to me that a total UK-wide production capacity of 3,000,000 doses/day would not be unreasonable.

However, I am serving notice that I am not proposing that Scotland should wait around until Boris Johnson is convinced of the need to increase vaccine production to such a scale.

I am focusing my political efforts on winning support in Scotland to establish a vaccine production facility here.

[evan_au]

I see that the population of Scotland is around 5.5 million.
- So you are proposing a facility that could produce 11 million doses in a month or two
- Enough to give every Scot two doses, 20 days apart (the recommended interval is 3 -12 weeks)

The elapsed time to build a vaccine plant to an existing design must be at least 6 months
- And getting approval for each unique site will probably take another 3 months...
- By which time every Scot will be vaccinated anyway

The Australian government is acutely aware that, being on the bottom of the world, we are often at the bottom of other country's priorities
- And we have an experienced vaccine maker (CSL)
- So as soon as the pandemic started, CSL was instructed to be ready to mass-produce two candidate vaccines: Astra-Zeneca and a local candidate from UQ (the latter was abandoned after clinical trials)
- The CSL facility is now approved, almost 12 months later, and will start delivering vaccines Real Soon Now...
- Just in time for the EU to restrict exports out of the EU.
- And the factories running into problems as they ramp up production
- At least Donald Trump was upfront about USA First, forget the rest!

It is inevitable that additional polyvalent vaccinations will be required, to deal with the multiplying variants
- And so extra production capacity will be required, if we are going to control COVID-19 worldwide
- Some of this capacity will be covered by increased productivity as production experience grows
- I am sure that a lot of investors are doing the sums to see if it is worth building extra vaccine plants - but it's quite unclear whether they should choose a safe first-generation vaccine, or gamble on one of the second-generation vaccine candidates...

[alancalverd]

The biggest hurdles to overcome would be sourcing the equipment and obtaining production quality approval, in a short  enough time and with a sufficient prospective market for investors to recoup their stake. As I see it Astra Zeneca  does not have any plant or indeed any significant presence in Scotland and whilst MHRA might look kindly on the project, experience suggests that the profound incompetence of Scottish government regulators would add delay without value, as usual. 

The decision to increase production to any level does not lie with Boris Johnson unless (a) he becomes president or (b) he takes emergency powers to nationalise factories and mandate output. Since his party would disown him in either case, it would not improve his chances of re-election so it won't happen. The decision rests entirely with the Board of OAZ and must be based on their assessment of the future market.

One of the strengths of the OAZ vaccine is its tolerance of storage and transport conditions. This has allowed distributed manufacture between existing plants in Oxford and Keele with a bottling facility in Wrexham, conveniently near an air freight facility at Hawarden and with good road and rail connections . Moving 250,000 doses/day to Scottish cities from Wrexham would be no more difficult than from Inverness, and Hawarden can cope with large intercontinental freighters for export.   
 
So the question is whether setting up a new production facility in Scotland would have any short term (within 6 months from today) benefit to the local population, in which case the absurd government might be persuaded to do something useful; or whether it would show a long-term profit, in which case AZ would be pleased to consider your proposal.

[Peter Dow (OP)]

Valneva Livingston


28th January 2021. GOV.UK Large-scale coronavirus vaccine manufacturing begins in Scotland

“Speciality vaccine company Valneva has started commercial manufacturing of its promising COVID-19 vaccine candidate in Livingston, West Lothian, Scotland. …

If the vaccine proves successful and receives regulatory approval following a rigorous assessment of available data, the Livingston facility will have the capacity to produce up to 250 million doses annually for shipment across the UK and around the world.”

If approved that would be up to 685,000 doses per day supplied from Valneva Livingston. Shared among the UK population equally that would be 56,000 doses per day for Scots.

56k/day is good, it would be a most welcome supplement to the existing limited vaccine supply stream in Scotland but I must ask if that would that be enough to allow for the fastest possible roll-out of a booster vaccine should the need arise?

It should be possible to vaccinate 250,000 Scots per day and to administer one dose to every Scot in about 3 weeks, ready to offer 2nd doses as required.

So my opinion is that the gold standard supply for Scotland is 250,000 doses/day and that’s why I have called for a new 250,000 doses/day vaccine production facility in Scotland, set up in partnership with AstraZeneca and funded by the Scottish Government so that the entire output could be prioritised for Scots if required.

“Vaccine nationalism?” Well maybe but that soon becomes vaccine internationalism after Scots have been vaccinated because all that additional vaccine production can then be dedicated for export.

By the same argument, the gold standard supply for the whole UK would be 3 million doses/day – 3 times more than the 1 million doses/day that the UK Government seems to have satisfied itself with.

This is not the time to rest on our vaccine laurels.

[alancalverd]

I am personally in favor of immediate and total independence for Scotland, with a hard border where Hadrian so wisely put it,  withdrawal of all UK defence forces from Scottish bases and coastal waters,  repatriation of Scottish MPs from Westminster, a separate currency, and complete independence of all public services. A referendum held in England would almost certainly give a 60:40 result in favor, and the northern isles should have a referendum choice to become part of Norway.

Meanwhile it seems sensible to distribute all available vaccines on a strict clinical priority basis throughout the NHS.

The gold standard is to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as possible, with whatever mutually compatible material is available. This is most efficiently done with the largest possible catchment area and target population.

As for "vaccine nationalism" I do not approve of governments interfering in private business beyond taking a fair share of taxation and ensuring international consistency of safety and quality standards. If you want to favor one political area with a product, either buy it on the open market of set up a national company to make it, but don't tell me who I can buy from or sell to.