Theirs is AZD1222, fka ChAdOx1 nCoV-19. It has goofy delivery dates for multiple markets.
We've had no bad news because it's a simple design that bets on robust immune response doing the job. It's in contractors' interest to push ferocious timetables regardless of whether this vaccine strategy is viable: if it isn't, payouts are still secured prior to evidence of this coming to light, so they don't get stuck holding the bag. If it is, they're getting to market by next flu season.
>a simple design that bets on robust immune response doing the job.
That means greater surveillance time, because so little has been established about activity thresholds that might be deemed properly immunizing. Greater reliance on strong immune response than more complex designs means greater uncertainty with respect to each step of the trials, including projecting general population results from challenge trial results.
So the bad news can't come as fast as it might for other designs. So far, the main worry has been poor activity in monkey challenge testing. But that's not enough to call "bad news" yet. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.13.093195
There's no downside to proceeding with manufacturing at full speed provided the financing is secured, yes. That's what I was getting at. "Produced at no-profit" still comes with significant opportunities for contractors and liabilities if they haven't been paid yet. It would be a nightmare for a public-private partnership to fall apart with manufacturing costs left uncovered because a vaccine platform has fallen out of favor. At the scale of multinationals, even issues like brexit having been pseudo-postponed until the end of 2020 right before all of this stuff hit might have something to do with how they're trying to structure delivery timetables. It's hard to say how any particular firm structures multiple deals with billion dollar pricetags.
We've had no bad news because it's a simple design that bets on robust immune response doing the job. It's in contractors' interest to push ferocious timetables regardless of whether this vaccine strategy is viable: if it isn't, payouts are still secured prior to evidence of this coming to light, so they don't get stuck holding the bag. If it is, they're getting to market by next flu season.
https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/vaccines/azd1222-sars-...