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Germany set to extend lockdown on concerns over new coronavirus variants

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel wears a protective face mask as she leaves after speaking to the media for her annual summer press conference during the coronavirus pandemic on August 28, 2020 in Berlin, Germany.

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Chancellor Angela Merkel is set to announce Germany will extend its lockdown until March 14 amid concerns over new strains of the coronavirus.

A draft document emerged early on Wednesday outlining plans between Merkel and state officials to maintain the lockdown and to urge that citizens maintain social-distancing rules, but to gradually lift some restrictions in the coming weeks.

The re-opening of schools is a priority for the German leadership, although the country’s federal system means that individual states are expected to be able to decide how to do this. The reopening of shops and hotels could begin next month in areas where the infection rate is low too. Restrictions were due to end on Feb. 14.

There are concerns in Germany over the spread of more contagious variants of the virus, particularly the mutation first discovered in the U.K. last fall. Yet Germany’s daily number of new infections has been falling amid a continued lockdown of public life across the country.

Public health body, the Robert Koch Institute, reported 8,072 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday and 813 deaths, bringing the total number of infections to date to around 2.3 million, and the death toll to 62,969.

Earlier Wednesday, one German lawmaker reportedly described the situation as “highly fragile.”

EU’s slow rollout

The slow rollout of coronavirus vaccines in Germany, as well as the rest of the EU, is a bugbear for the German government, which is a key pillar in the bloc. The EU was slower than the U.K. and U.S. to order vaccines from key drugmakers and has faced supply shortages.

The longer vaccination rollouts take, the more prolonged the economic damage of lockdowns are expected to be. Germany’s economy contracted by 5% in 2020, according to full-year GDP (gross domestic product) data released in January.

Ludovic Subran, chief economist at Allianz, told CNBC Wednesday that the slow vaccination rollout could really damage the wider EU’s growth prospects in 2021.

“I’m getting a bit nervous, and we’re only in February, that we’re missing the boat here, that the vaccination is the best investment there is and we should put all our forces (efforts) there,” he told CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe.”

“Our forecasts show that Europe will only go back to pre-crisis (growth) levels by 2022, and then we saw the vaccination chaos and we started to think ‘OK, are we really jeopardizing the recovery here’ … the problem is we’re vaccinating four times slower than the U.K. and U.S. here,” he said, adding: “This is really a big issue, because this is going to make or break the GDP recovery of 2021 for Europe.”

—CNBC’s Annette Weisbach contributed to this article.

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UK trial experiments with mixing Covid vaccines

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Empty vials of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine are seen at a first come first serve drive-thru vaccination site operated by the Lake County Health Department on January 28, 2021 in Groveland, Florida.

Paul Hennessy | NurPhoto | Getty Images

LONDON — A trial is being launched in the U.K. to explore whether using different Covid-19 vaccines for the first and second doses works in a bid to make nationwide vaccination programs more flexible.

The trial, being led by the University of Oxford and run by the National Immunisation Schedule Evaluation Consortium, will evaluate the feasibility of using a different vaccine for the initial “prime” vaccination to the follow-up “booster” vaccination. 

It is hoped the study will help policymakers understand whether mixing different Covid vaccines could be a viable route to increase the flexibility of vaccination programs and whether it could even provide better protection.

“If we do show that these vaccines can be used interchangeably in the same schedule this will greatly increase the flexibility of vaccine delivery, and could provide clues as to how to increase the breadth of protection against new virus strains,” Matthew Snape, chief investigator on the trial and associate professor in Paediatrics and Vaccinology at the University of Oxford, said on Thursday.

The trial, which is formally known as the “COVID-19 Heterologous Prime Boost study” but has been dubbed the “Com-Cov” study, will recruit over 800 volunteers aged 50 and above in England to evaluate the four different combinations of prime and booster vaccination.

It will trial a first dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine followed by boosting with either the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine or a further dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. The research will also look at a first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine followed by boosting with either the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, or a further dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. 

These will be evaluated at two different dosing schedules: at a four-week interval to give an early interim data readout, and at a 12-week interval. This latter dosing interval is the current U.K. vaccination policy: A delay in the second dose means more people can get their first vaccines sooner amid a tight supply of shots.

Although the policy has been seen to be controversial, with some experts worrying that it could make the vaccines in use in the U.K. less effective; so far only the University of Oxford-AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech candidates are in use, with the Moderna shot set to be added to the basket of vaccines in use later in spring.

However, the University of Oxford published a study on Wednesday in which it showed that a delay of 12 weeks between the first and second doses of the AstraZeneca jab increases the efficacy of the vaccine.

The researchers found that the shot was 76% effective at preventing symptomatic infection for three months after a single dose, and that the efficacy rate rose to 82.4% when there was at least a 12-week interval before the second dose. When the second dose was given less than six weeks after the first one, the efficacy rate was 54.9%.

How the Com-Cov study will work

In the latest “Com-Cov” study, researchers will collect blood samples from trial volunteers and will monitor the impact of different dosing regimens on participants’ immune responses, as well as looking for any additional adverse reactions to the new combinations of vaccines.

The study will last for 13 months and has been backed by £7 million ($9.5 million) of government funding from the Vaccines Taskforce, which was set up by the U.K. last April to co-ordinate efforts to research and produce a coronavirus vaccine.

Professor Snape said the study was “tremendously exciting,” before adding that “it will provide information vital to the rollout of vaccines in the U.K. and globally.”

Richer countries are scrambling to vaccinate as many people as possible as national lockdowns, aimed to limit the spread of infections and prevent hospitals from being overrun, damage economies.

The U.K. has been hit hard by the pandemic and has seen cases surge in the winter, aided by a more virulent variant of the virus that emerged in southeastern England that has now become a dominant strain in the country.

The U.K. has the fourth-highest number of cases in the world at present, with over 3.8 million confirmed infections, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University, and has recorded 109,547 deaths.

The U.K. government was quick to pre-order coronavirus vaccines from a variety of makers early on last year, and to approve the vaccines currently in use. Its vaccination program has been widely praised for its agility and reach, and it’s on target to have vaccinated 15 million people in its top four priority groups, including health and care workers, the elderly and over-70s and anyone deemed extremely clinical vulnerable, by mid-February.

The latest government data, as of Wednesday, shows that just over 10 million people have had their first vaccine dose, and just under 500,000 have had a second dose, too. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which is produced in Britain, makes up the bulk of the U.K.’s vaccination program.  

Deputy Chief Medical Officer and Senior Responsible Officer for the study, Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, said that the research could even show that alternating vaccines could enhance the level of antibodies needed to fight potential Covid-19 infection.

“It is also even possible that by combining vaccines, the immune response could be enhanced giving even higher antibody levels that last longer; unless this is evaluated in a clinical trial we just won’t know. This study will give us greater insight into how we can use vaccines to stay on top of this nasty disease,” he said.

The U.K.’s vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi told the BBC on Thursday that, for now, the country’s vaccination program will continue as normal: “At the moment we will not change anything at all,” Zahawi told the ‘Today’ program.

“If you’ve had a Pfizer BioNTech vaccine for your first dose, you’ll have a Pfizer BioNTech vaccine for your second.  If you’ve had Oxford-AstraZeneca, you’ll have Oxford-AstraZeneca for your second dose.”

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Delaying second AstraZeneca vaccine dose does work, study shows

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A health worker shows a vial of AstraZeneca-Oxford’s Covid-19 coronavirus vaccine, at Patan Hospital near Kathmandu on January 27, 2021.

PRAKASH MATHEMA | AFP | Getty Images

The U.K.’s decision to delay the second shot of the AstraZeneca-University of Oxford coronavirus vaccine has been found to be an effective strategy, according to the results of a new study.

Researchers at the University of Oxford found that the Covid-19 vaccine was 76% effective at preventing symptomatic infection for three months after a single dose, and in fact that the efficacy rate rose with a longer interval before the first and second doses.

“Vaccine efficacy after a single standard dose of vaccine from day 22 to day 90 post vaccination was 76% … and modelled analysis indicated that protection did not wane during this initial 3 month period,” the study, under review at The Lancet medical journal and published on Tuesday as a preprint, found.

The efficacy rate rose to 82.4% when there was at least a 12-week interval before the second dose. When the second dose was given less than six weeks after the first one, the efficacy rate was 54.9%.

“These analyses show that higher vaccine efficacy is obtained with a longer interval between the first and second dose, and that a single dose of vaccine is highly efficacious in the first 90 days, providing further support for current policy,” the report said.

The U.K.’s current strategy is to vaccinate as many people as possible with a single dose first and to delay the second dose for up to 12 weeks; the idea being that a first dose provides at least some partial protection and allows more people to access the vaccines while they are in limited supply.

The decision to delay giving people a second, booster dose has provoked controversy, and some questioned whether it could lower the efficacy of the vaccine at preventing serious Covid-19 infection.

However, the U.K.’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, supported the approach. The U.K. is also delaying the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, a move that the vaccine makers have warned against, arguing that there is no data to support a delay.

The study also provided important data on whether the vaccine reduces transmission of the virus, a previous unknown and a crucial question for policymakers looking to lift lockdown measures that have crippled the economy.

Based on weekly swabs from volunteers in the U.K. study, it found a 67% reduction in transmission after the first dose of the vaccine.

Effective strategy

This latest study supports the U.K. government’s decision, concluding that vaccination programs “aimed at vaccinating a large proportion of the population with a single dose, with a second dose given after a 3 month period, is an effective strategy for reducing disease, and may be the optimal for rollout of a pandemic vaccine when supplies are limited in the short term.”

The study used further data on ongoing clinical trials into the vaccine. A separate announcement from AstraZeneca on Wednesday showed that the vaccine also prevented serious illness from Covid-19, with no severe cases and no hospitalizations more than 22 days after the first dose.

The vaccine was approved by the U.K.’s drug regulator on Dec. 30 and, as a shot produced in Britain, makes up the bulk of the nation’s immunization program, which has been hailed as a success so far.

The U.K. is on track to have vaccinated its top four priority groups (the over-70s, residents and staff in elderly care homes, frontline health and social care workers and the clinically extremely vulnerable) numbering around 15 million people by mid-February.

As of Feb.1, over 9.6 million people had received a first dose of the vaccine, and just under 500,000 had received two doses, according to government data.

Professor Andrew Pollard, chief investigator of the Oxford vaccine trial, and co-author of the study, said “these new data provide an important verification of the interim data that was used by more than 25 regulators including the MHRA and EMA to grant the vaccine emergency use authorisation.”

“It also supports the policy recommendation made by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation for a 12-week prime-boost interval, as they look for the optimal approach to roll out, and reassures us that people are protected from 22 days after a single dose of the vaccine.”

The researchers also hope to report data regarding the new coronavirus variants in the coming days, and expect the findings to be broadly similar to those already reported by fellow vaccine developers: That the current vaccines do work against mutations of the virus.

Germany, France and Sweden are currently not recommending the AstraZeneca vaccine to over-65s, saying there is not enough trial data on this age group. The vaccine maker and U.K. government have defended the jab, however, and say the data that is available shows it is safe and effective, with more analysis set to become available soon.

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EU suggests AstraZeneca diverts Covid-19 vaccines from UK

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An AstraZeneca vaccine production line.

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The European Union has suggested that drugmaker AstraZeneca divert supplies of its coronavirus vaccine from the U.K. to mainland Europe, as a battle over production delays and supply continues.

It comes after AstraZeneca told the EU last week that it would initially deliver far fewer doses of its Covid vaccine to the 27-member bloc than originally thought.

The EU demanded on Wednesday that the pharmaceutical giant fulfil its agreement to supply it with coronavirus vaccines, by whatever means necessary.

Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said talks with the company, which continued Wednesday, had been “constructive.” But she also tweeted that “contractual obligations must be met, vaccines must be delivered to EU citizens.”

She said in a statement that the EU had rejected the “logic of first come first served,” after AstraZeneca’s CEO blamed supply delays on teething issues at its European manufacturing sites, and said similar issues in the U.K. had been ironed out because it had ordered its vaccine dose three months earlier than the EU.

In a press briefing, Kyriakides said there was “no hierarchy” in the production plants named in its advance purchase agreement with AstraZeneca, and no stipulation on which ones would or wouldn’t supply the EU.

“In the contract there are four factories listed but it does not differentiate between the U.K. and Europe. The U.K. factories are part of our advance purchase agreement and this is why they have to deliver,” she said. There was no clause in the contract stating that the drugmaker would prioritize the U.K., she added.

Battle brewing

It marks the latest development in the very public argument between the EU and AstraZeneca, as the latter confronts problems at two of its European plants.

The British-Swedish company’s CEO Pascal Soriot stoked tensions further on Tuesday when he said in an interview with Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper that its agreement with the EU was a “best effort” one and not a “contractual commitment.”

The EU hit back, demanding that the drugmaker present detailed plans over its delivery schedule. One official explicitly asked AstraZeneca to divert doses made in the U.K. to the EU, although the company did not respond to this issue, according to a Reuters report.

In the Tuesday interview Soriot said: “The U.K. government said the supply coming out of the U.K. supply chain would go to the U.K. first. Basically, that’s how it is. In the EU agreement it is mentioned that the manufacturing sites in the U.K. were an option for Europe, but only later.”

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson did not comment directly on the matter Wednesday, but said: “We’re very confident in our supplies, we’re very confident in our contracts, and we’re going ahead on that basis.”

Vaccination drives

The EU is struggling to get its vaccination drive into gear as it lacks supplies. It was first dealt a blow by vaccine maker Pfizer-BioNTech, which announced that it had to temporarily lower production in order to upgrade its manufacturing capacity in Belgium. This was then followed by AstraZeneca last Friday reducing its delivery estimates for the region.

One unnamed senior EU official told Reuters that the bloc expected about 80 million doses by March, but had been told it would receive only 31 million doses instead. The company has not confirmed the quantities involved.

The European Medicines Agency is expected to approve the AstraZeneca vaccine for use on Friday.

The U.K. ordered 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine last May, making it the first country to do so. It is heavily reliant on the vaccine for its immunization drive, which has sprinted ahead of those in continental Europe, having begun in early December. The EU began its rollout on Dec. 27; it originally ordered 300 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in August.

So far, the U.K. has vaccinated over 7.1 million people with a first vaccine dose, and almost half a million have received their second dose, meaning it has carried out more immunizations than German, France, Italy and Spain combined, according to Our World In Data figures.

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AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot interview on supplies to the EU

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Pascal Soriot, chief executive officer of AstraZeneca.

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AstraZeneca’s CEO Pascal Soriot has defended its delayed rollout of the coronavirus vaccine to the EU, saying the drugmaker is “working 24/7” to fix production issues. But he also noted that the EU had ordered three months later than the U.K., however, and this meant it was behind in dealing with supply issues.

The EU has reacted angrily to a delay in AstraZeneca’s supply of coronavirus vaccine, which is expected to be approved by the European medicines regulator by the end of the week, to the bloc.

The 27-member bloc was expecting around 80 million doses of the jab by the end of March, but now will reportedly receive only around 31 million doses. As member states struggle to access vaccine supplies and rollout jabs, the EU has said it could limit exports of Covid-19 vaccines made in the EU.

Speaking to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Soriot said that delays in the supply of its coronavirus vaccine were caused by a variety of production issues.

“We believe we’ve sorted out those issues, but we are basically two months behind where we wanted to be,” he said

The British-Swedish drugmaker had also experienced “teething issues like this in the U.K. supply chain,” Soriot noted, but as the U.K. contract was signed three months before the European vaccine deal, the company “had an extra three months to fix all the glitches we experienced.”

However, he said AstraZeneca still planned on delivering a good bulk of the vaccines promised to the EU in February. “But, you know, if we deliver in February what we are planning to deliver, it’s not a small volume. We are planning to deliver millions of doses to Europe, it is not small,” he told the newspaper.

A Brazilian doctor voluntarily receives an injection as part of phase 3 trials of a vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, in July 2020.

Nelson Almeida | AFP | Getty Images

Asked what amount the EU could expect to receive, Soriot said that as soon as the vaccine is approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), “we will be shipping at least 3 million doses immediately to Europe, then we’ll have another shipment about a week later and then the third or fourth week of February. And the target is to deliver 17 million doses by February.”

“It’s not as good as we would like to, but it’s really it’s not so bad,” he said. Globally, Soriot said production capacity would be 100 million doses from February onward.

Anger in the EU

Talks between AstraZeneca and the EU were held on Monday, after which the EU’s Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said that discussions had “resulted in dissatisfaction with the lack of clarity and insufficient explanations.”

The EU has asked AstraZeneca to provide it with a detailed plan of vaccine deliveries and when distribution will take place, with further discussions set for Wednesday.

Some countries, including Italy, have threatened legal action against AstraZeneca for the delay. Others have asked why the U.K., which is heavily reliant on the AstraZeneca jab in its vaccination rollout, has sprinted ahead in its vaccination drive and had not experienced supply shortages, as yet. It has immunized more than 6.8 million people, with at least a first dose of the two-dose vaccine.

Soriot said that the U.K. production plant was more productive, and insisted there was no anti-EU context.

“First of all, we have different plants and they have different yields and different productivity. One of the plants with the highest yield is in the U.K. because it started earlier. It also had its own issues, but we solved them all, it has good productivity, but it’s the U.K. plant because it started earlier.”

“We’re not doing it on purpose. I’m European, I have Europe at heart. Our chairman is Swedish, is European. Our CFO is European. Many people in the management are European. So we want to treat Europe as best we can.”

He noted that the drugmaker had a “best effort” type of agreement with the EU as it had wanted to be supplied at the same time as the U.K., even though it was later to request the vaccine. “We didn’t commit with the EU, by the way. It’s not a commitment we have to Europe: it’s a best effort.”

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson poses for a photograph with a vial of the AstraZeneca/Oxford University Covid-19 candidate vaccine.

WPA Pool | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Scaling-up and production issues

With a coronavirus vaccine developed, clinically trialed and approved in less than a year, Soriot said it was natural to experience glitches in the scaling-up process.

“We are scaling up to hundreds of millions, billions of doses of vaccines at a very high speed. A year ago, we didn’t have a vaccine. When you do that, you have glitches, you have scale-up problems,” he said, adding there were current problems with the production of the vaccine substance in two European plants.

“For Europe, the drug substance is essentially produced in two plants, one in the Netherlands, one in Belgium. The drug product is actually produced in Italy and Germany. So from a drug product viewpoint, we have full capacity. We have zero problem. The current problems have to do with manufacturing the drug’s substance,” he said.

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