In the fight against Covid-19, a third weapon will soon be available.
After the vaccines of Pfizer and Moderna, it is that of AstraZeneca which received this Friday the sesame from the European Medicines Agency.
The EMA “recommends” that it be placed on the market for all adults, from the age of 18.
This news is all the more good as the product is easier to transport and store, giving hope for an amplification of the vaccination campaign, struggling in France: lack of sufficient doses, Hauts-de-France and Bourgogne Franche-Comté will suspend their first injections on February 12.
But the enthusiasm remains to be put into perspective.
Already, because even before its arrival on the market, the British-Swedish laboratory announced significant delays in deliveries.
Then, because a doubt remains: if the demonstrated effectiveness of its doses is 60%, what about the oldest and therefore the most at risk of developing a serious form of the disease?
Problem, the majority of the 24,000 participants in clinical trials were under 55 years, not allowing, for the time being, to give significant results for the others.
But "the experience of other vaccines" reassures the EMA, which recommends it to all.
Notice expected in France at the beginning of the week
However, even before his decision, German experts said Thursday not to advise the vaccine to over 65s.
And in France?
As soon as the authorization is given, the experts from the Haute Autorité de Santé will scrutinize the scientific data and issue an opinion, “at the beginning of the week.
"
"Like the protest of German doctors, the HAS can recommend reserving the vaccine for people under 65," confirms Professor Dominique Deplanque, director of the clinical investigation center of the University Hospital of Lille (North).
Is this the choice that this pharmacologist would make?
"Without the file in hand, difficult to say," he replies.
But we must remember that we are in a context of shortage of vaccines and to have one more, it is not nothing ... even though its effectiveness would ultimately be less good than that of Pfizer and Moderna who have set the bar very high.
Like them, AstraZeneca is administered in two doses, with an interval of four to twelve weeks.
The battle of contracts
On the economic front, coincidence of the calendar (or not), that same day, the European Union won its case in the standoff that it initiated with the pharmaceutical group, by receiving authorization to publish the contract pre-order of 400 million doses.
In commercial law, a contract cannot be published without the agreement of both parties.
Tuesday, the industrialist had indicated that he would finally deliver only a quarter of his vaccines in the first quarter, triggering the wrath of Brussels.
The EU has since been pushing for the contract, and some of its provisions, to be made public.
The request was heard… halfway.
Some of the forty or so pages have been "redacted", that is to say, cut off from passages deemed "confidential" or falling within "business secrecy".
They were nevertheless highly enlightening since they specified the transaction prices, the payment terms and the exact schedule of deliveries.
In short, all the subjects that annoy!
The case did not end there.
After the contract was published on the EU site, some of the redacted places were accessible for a few minutes to Internet users via a simple PDF reader.
This is how we learned that the order from the European Commission to AstraZeneca amounted to 870 million euros, according to the German weekly Der Spiegel.
A blunder quickly corrected with the upload of a second version, this time locked.
But too late.
