Jon Worth Profile picture
26 Apr, 13 tweets, 6 min read
Something really does not add up with the Johnson & Johnson 💉 supply numbers EU-US

But where is the error?

A 🧵 to get to the bottom of it - comments and stats in the replies very welcome!
Here are the CDC's numbers for the USA

8m doses administered
17.6m doses delivered (so 9.6m delivered and not administered)

Source: covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra… Image
On 28 February this NY Times piece by @SharonLNYT:
"The initial 3.9 million [J&J] doses were manufactured at its factory in the Netherlands; officials have said the rest of the doses were expected to come from its Baltimore plant." (that's Emergent)

nytimes.com/2021/02/28/wor…
That would match what was known EU side at the time - just under 1m doses have gone from EU to US since the Transparency Mechanism was introduced 31 January (and then just under 3m before 31 Jan)

Commission explained to Dave Keating:
Then the Emergent plant in Baltimore was hit by a series of problems...
And then Spiegel journalist @ClausHecking directs me to this piece by The Street that states
"no vaccine manufactured at the plant [Emergent] has been distributed for use in the U.S."

thestreet.com/investing/emer…
But then back to the CDC stats...

8m doses administered
17.6m doses delivered (so 9.6m delivered and not administered)

Even if that 9.6m is from Emergent (and hence cannot be used), that *still* leaves an unexplained shortfall of 4m doses
In other words: we *know* just under 4m doses went from the EU to the US from the @SharonLNYT piece, and we know 8m were administered, so where did the rest come from?
There are a few plausible explanations...

1) The NY Times story somehow has the wrong statistic, and exports from EU are much higher than thought - *but* all these exports were pre-31 Jan - but is >7m exported pre-31 Jan conceivable?
2) There have been more exports since 31 Jan than the Commission was aware of, but as all exports are covered by the mechanism is this possible? Even export of ingredients. The mechanism isn't just for finished vaccine...
3) J&J has somehow been using doses from the Emergent plant before the problems were found there, and The Street is wrong about no doses from there being used

4) There's manufacturing somewhere other than Baltimore and Leiden
At the very least we need some more data to clear all this up. @ThierryBreton what do you say? @DaveKeating @FaktaShake @bill_emmott @BioHJM @jwildeboer @danieldschade @Semyaza666 @arekmakarenko @vramosbis @kmlvrmln wdyt?

/ends
First plausible answer is from @el_snoop - that these extra doses come from Catalent in Indiana fiercepharma.com/manufacturing/…

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More from @jonworth

28 Apr
This 🧵 is a summary of my article for @metropole_vie about 💉 supply in 🇪🇺

You can read the whole piece here:
metropole.at/eu-covid-vacci…

tl;dr: the worst of 🇪🇺's supply woes are behind it now...

1/11
22-29 January was really the low point

22 Jan: AZ scaled back its delivery forecast to the EU for Q1 from 100m to 31m

29 Jan: von der Leyen caused all the controversy by including reference to Art 16 NI Protocol in the transparency mechanism

2/11
But that transparency mechanism was when it all began to turn. For it allowed the EU to explain what vaccines were going where - and also highlight how much of UK's early vaccine success was based on exports from the EU

3/11
Read 11 tweets
26 Apr
Agggghhh

@jwildeboer sent me this Spiegel 💉 story by @ClausHecking, abut J&J delivery problems in Germany

I will translate and take this one apart piece by piece

spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unt…
"Benachteiligt der Konzern die EU?"

"Is the company disadvantaging the EU?"

No, as we will see
"»Die zweite Lieferung wird nicht den ursprünglich prognostizierten Umfang haben«, schreibt das Bundesgesundheitsministerium"

"The second delivery will not have the originally forecast volume," writes the Federal Ministry of Health

That's correct. But let's get to *why*
Read 17 tweets
26 Apr
So now the European Commission *is* taking AstraZeneca to court, I presume all the EU-sceptics who said the Commission will never dare will eat their words?

People like this:
Read 9 tweets
25 Apr
"Have you seen that Express is rebroadcasting one of your Euronews interviews?" @RobHarrison_EU asked me earlier

"What?" I replied

And so they are... here I am saying there is "fear in Brussels at the moment" in a clip on the Daily Express site

A 🧵 on fake news
The story is titled "Brussels chaos: UK tells EU it's all set for WTO rules as Australia deal gives huge boost" and is dated yesterday, Saturday 24 April

I have never even spoken to Euronews about the EU-Australia trade deal

The story by @DavidPBMaddox
express.co.uk/news/politics/…
I have also looked at the code - the clip is not an embed of video from somewhere else. The file is hosted by The Express

Perhaps one for @euronews to follow up there...

But there's more...
Read 9 tweets
22 Apr
Listening to BBC Radio 4 Briefing Room with @DAaronovitch explaining the German Grüne and why Baerbock is Chancellor candidate. It interviews @fazbub and @chantalS_T. It has some interesting background, but I'm not sure it really explains what's going on

bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/li…
It makes the case the rise of the Grüne was a sort of counterweight to the rise of the AfD in 2015-2017. That's not really right I think. The programme doesn't really explain the headaches of other parties that help the Grüne.
Also I am not sure you can understand what the Grüne could do without asking where they'd manage to get agreement with coalition partners.

@SophiaBesch talking on foreign policy at the end of the programme is the clearest of the speakers.
Read 5 tweets
22 Apr
Damn I'm annoyed at vaccine supply pieces like this one on Novavax
bbc.com/news/uk-englan…

I'm going to take this one apart piece by piece...
"A factory on Teesside making the new Novavax Covid-19 vaccine is on target to make the 60 million doses ordered by the UK, bosses have confirmed."

60m doses, sure, but *by when*? Without that answer on the schedule the number has little meaning
"Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies in Billingham began production in February ahead of approval for its use, which is expected within weeks."

OK, good. But without any number of numbers per week, or numbers so far this also means rather little
Read 13 tweets

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