As re­ports crop up that de­liv­er­ies of Pfiz­er and BioN­Tech’s Covid-19 vac­cine are be­ing un­ex­pect­ed­ly cut, Italy won­ders if it can take the vac­cine de­vel­op­ers to court, ac­cord­ing to the Wall Street Jour­nal. 

Af­ter its ship­ment for this week was cut by 29%, the Ital­ian gov­ern­ment con­sult­ed its at­tor­ney gen­er­al about tak­ing le­gal ac­tion, the WSJ re­port­ed. Pfiz­er and BioN­Tech had warned the EU and Cana­da last week that their al­lo­ca­tions would be re­duced as Pfiz­er up­grades its Bel­gium fac­to­ry. What Italy says it doesn’t ap­pre­ci­ate, though, is the short no­tice.

Italy isn’t the first coun­try to com­plain of vac­cine short­ages as au­thor­i­ties scram­ble to get dos­es in arms. Ger­many’s Ham­burg said they al­so re­ceived a small­er ship­ment — and they’re strug­gling to ex­tract a full six dos­es from vials.

While the vials were ini­tial­ly la­beled for five dos­es, the EU found ear­li­er this month that it was pos­si­ble to squeeze out a sixth dose. Pfiz­er and BioN­Tech said they are com­mit­ted to de­liv­er­ing a cer­tain amount of dos­es — not vials, ac­cord­ing to the WSJ. But with­out a spe­cial sy­ringe, those ad­min­is­ter­ing the vac­cine can’t quite get that sixth dose out, the pa­per re­port­ed.

Last month, sev­er­al US states al­so com­plained of sharply re­duced vac­cine al­lo­ca­tions. Wash­ing­ton Gov. Jay In­slee said the CDC told him to ex­pect 40% few­er dos­es one week, NPR re­port­ed. Iowa was ex­pect­ing a 30% short­fall. Pfiz­er said it had mil­lions of dos­es sit­ting in a ware­house, and was await­ing in­struc­tions from the gov­ern­ment. HHS Sec­re­tary Alex Azar, on the oth­er hand, blamed Pfiz­er’s pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty.

The news comes as the US lags be­hind its dis­tri­b­u­tion plans. While fed­er­al pro­jec­tions had aimed to dis­trib­ute 20 mil­lion dos­es by the end of 2020, on­ly 16.5 mil­lion dos­es have been ad­min­is­tered so far, ac­cord­ing to the CDC.

Dead­ly fire strikes fa­cil­i­ties mak­ing As­traZeneca vac­cine in In­dia

A dead­ly fire broke out Thurs­day at the Serum In­sti­tute of In­dia, where hun­dreds of mil­lions of dos­es of the As­traZeneca Covid-19 are be­ing man­u­fac­tured.

Five peo­ple died in the blaze, the cause of which re­mains un­known. Serum In­sti­tute CEO Adar Poon­awal­la ex­pressed con­do­lences for the fam­i­lies and sought to as­sure that the tragedy would not im­pact vac­cine pro­duc­tion, as the in­sti­tute had 50 mil­lion dos­es in re­serve and oth­er build­ings ded­i­cat­ed to pro­duc­tion.

The fire broke out in a new build­ing the man­u­fac­tur­er was build­ing to scale pro­duc­tion of the As­traZeneca vac­cine. Murlid­har Mo­hol, may­or of Pune city, where the Serum In­sti­tute is lo­cat­ed, said the vic­tims were like­ly con­struc­tion work­ers, AP re­port­ed.

We have just re­ceived some dis­tress­ing up­dates; up­on fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion we have learnt that there has un­for­tu­nate­ly been some loss of life at the in­ci­dent. We are deeply sad­dened and of­fer our deep­est con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly mem­bers of the de­part­ed.

— Adar Poon­awal­la (@adar­poon­awal­la) Jan­u­ary 21, 2021

The fire was one of two dis­as­ters to threat­en fa­cil­i­ties mak­ing As­traZeneca’s Covid-19 vac­cine in the last 24 hours. A vac­cine plant in Wrex­ham, Wales sought aid from lo­cal au­thor­i­ties Wednes­day as a storm tore in­to the town, caus­ing flood­ing and evac­u­a­tions.

The fac­to­ry, though, ap­pears to have weath­ered the tu­mult. A spokesper­son told Bloomberg Thurs­day that they ex­pe­ri­enced mild flood­ing, but suf­fered no dis­rup­tions to work and pro­duc­tion is on­go­ing.

As­traZeneca, de­spite fac­ing sub­stan­tial set­backs in its vac­cine pro­gram, has pur­sued the most am­bi­tious pro­duc­tion goals of any Covid-19 de­vel­op­er, aim­ing to pro­duce 3 bil­lion dos­es world­wide by the end of 2021. The Serum In­sti­tute ac­counts for around 1 bil­lion dos­es of that to­tal.  — Ja­son Mast

US recom­mits to WHO un­der new Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion

On his first day in of­fice, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden inked a di­rec­tive recom­mit­ting the US to the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, re­vers­ing the Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion’s calls to aban­don the agency amid the pan­dem­ic.

Ac­cord­ing to Sec­re­tary of State-des­ig­nate Tony Blinken, that means join­ing CO­V­AX, a pro­gram set up by CEPI, the WHO and Gavi to eq­ui­tably dis­trib­ute vac­cines around the world, the Wash­ing­ton Post re­port­ed.

More than 180 coun­tries had signed agree­ments to the CO­V­AX Fa­cil­i­ty as of Oct. 14, in­clud­ing France, the UK and Chi­na. The co­op­er­a­tive aims to de­liv­er 2 bil­lion dos­es by the end of 2021. The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, how­ev­er, re­fused to join. One White House spokesman said the coun­try won’t be “con­strained by mul­ti­lat­er­al or­ga­ni­za­tions in­flu­enced by the cor­rupt World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion and Chi­na,” ac­cord­ing to a Bloomberg re­port.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion gave no­tice of plans to with­draw from the WHO back in Ju­ly. But sev­er­ing ties with the agency isn’t that sim­ple. Ac­cord­ing to the terms of a joint res­o­lu­tion passed in 1948, the US must give a year’s no­tice and pay back debts be­fore it can leave. How­ev­er, whether Trump could do so with­out Con­gress was un­clear, and De­mo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers pushed back.

Stephen Mor­ri­son, di­rec­tor of the Glob­al Health Pol­i­cy Cen­ter at the Cen­ter for Strate­gic and In­ter­na­tion­al Stud­ies, told WaPo that he thinks the WHO will wel­come the US. “But there’s go­ing to be an edge to it,” he said.

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