Covid-19 roundup: As­traZeneca gets EMA thumbs up for vac­cine amid bit­ter feud with EU; No­var­tis jumps in to man­u­fac­ture Pfiz­er/BioN­Tech vac­cine

The EMA has rec­om­mend­ed that the EU au­tho­rizes As­traZeneca and Ox­ford’s Covid-19 vac­cine, even as they’re in deep dis­pute over its de­liv­ery.

The agency said reg­u­la­tors based their as­sess­ment on com­bined re­sults from four clin­i­cal tri­als in the UK, Brazil and South Africa, in­volv­ing 24,000 peo­ple in to­tal, that sug­gest the vac­cine had a 60% ef­fi­ca­cy.

Ear­li­er in the day the EU made pub­lic their (heav­i­ly redact­ed) sup­ply con­tract, which of­fi­cials de­scribe as a bid to fos­ter trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in the vac­cine roll­out. It comes af­ter Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion pres­i­dent Ur­su­la von der Leyen di­aled up the pres­sure on As­traZeneca, as­sert­ing that its de­ci­sion to re­duce sup­plies to the EU a breach of “bind­ing or­ders” in the con­tract.

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