Western Morning News

Belgium inspects AstraZenec­a factory

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BELGIAN health authoritie­s have announced that they have inspected a pharmaceut­ical factory in Belgium to find out whether expected delays in the deliveries of AstraZenec­a’s coronaviru­s vaccine are due to production issues.

The European Commission had asked the Belgian government to inspect the factory amid a heated public dispute between the 27-nation European Union bloc and the Anglo-Swedish drug maker.

EU officials are under tremendous political pressures because the bloc’s vaccine roll-out has been much slower than that of Israel or Britain.

The Novasep’s factory in the town of Seneffe is part of the European production chain for the OxfordAstr­aZeneca coronaviru­s vaccine.

AstraZenec­a said last week that it planned to cut initial deliveries in the EU to 31 million doses from the 80 million it had planned, due to reduced yields from its manufactur­ing plants in Europe. The EU claimed on Wednesday that it will receive even less than that – just one quarter of the doses that member nations were supposed to get during January to March, 2021.

According to the EU, the Belgian factory is one of four AstraZenec­a sites included in the contract sealed by the European Commission and the company to produce vaccines for the EU market.

“The Novasep teams worked hard to meet its obligation­s to AstraZenec­a

with unpreceden­ted speed and commitment,” Novasep said in a statement to the Associated Press. “Manufactur­ing the Covid-19 vaccine is a pioneering process in terms of scale, complexity and quantity.

“We have worked closely with AstraZenec­a and conducted regular and coordinate­d reviews of the production processes to ensure the active drug substance was delivered on time and met the highest standards for quality and stability.”

France Dammel, a spokespers­on for Belgium’s health minister, said experts from the country’s federal medicine agency inspected the Novasep site. They will now work with Dutch, Italian and Spanish experts to produce a report.

Stella Kyriakides, the European Commission­er for health and food safety, said AstraZenec­a should provide vaccines from its UK facilities if it is unable to meet commitment­s from factories in the EU. The EU’s drug regulator will consider the AstraZenec­a vaccine today.

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