Aspens Covid flop does not bode well for African vaccine production

Africa’s desire to establish a vaccine industry after being left at the back of the queue in the global battle for Covid-19 shots has stumbled upon the first hurdle.

As the omicron variant spread through South Africa late last year, the continent’s largest pharmaceutical company negotiated an agreement to make a Covid-19 vaccine under license from Johnson & Johnson. Five months later, and after starting production in March, Aspen Pharmacare Holdings has not received a single order. Now it is considering using the plant to make anesthetics.

Read: Aspen can close the Covid vaccine line within a few weeks while negotiations drag on

The lack of business is grim for Aspen executives and for other companies establishing vaccine facilities in Africa. Moderna Inc., Pfizer Inc and biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong have all announced plans to produce shots on a continent where only 15.9% of the 1.2 billion population have completed a coronavirus vaccination course.

“There were many calls both from the West and from Africa that the best way to try to solve the problem was to establish our own local vaccine production capacity,” said Stavros Nicolaou, Aspen’s head of strategic trade. What happened next “sends an incredibly bad message,” he said.

Read: Aspen in Conversations with African Leaders on Low Covid Vaccine Orders

The result is also a blow to African governments who had hoped to see newly established facilities being used for more than just coronavirus. They could also have been adapted to help fight future epidemics and overlooked diseases such as malaria and HIV.

Aspen initially had talks with John Nkengasong, head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization and the World Bank, about the prospects for a vaccine manufactured in Africa. The plan was to use its newly built sterile facilities to make a Covid-19 shot.

The company continued to sign an agreement with J&J in September 2020 to make the US company’s candidate under contract, producing around 180 million vaccines under this scheme. Aspen began training about 500 people to work on the Covid vaccine line, and production at Aspen’s plant in the South African city of Gqeberha began in early 2021.

It would be the first vaccine Aspen had ever made, and the company later hoped to expand production to other inoculations needed across the continent, almost all of which are imported.

One problem was that under the J&J contract, Aspen had no say in where its shots went, and many left Africa, even though it had become clear that the continent was struggling to get the supplies it needed.

The ultimate prize was that Aspen made its shot under license instead of contract, allowing it to decide for the recipients of the doses it produced.

This was linked to the policy document of the African Union, which said that imports of all vaccines into Africa should be cut to 40% of those needed in 2040, from 99% at present. New locations were planned and it became clear that AU saw the production of Covid images as a first step towards this goal.

‘Financial failure’

Aspen’s vaccine, which uses the J & J substance but has the brand name Aspenovax, became the first Covid-19 vaccine produced in Africa for Africans. But as the world found itself flooded with doses that fewer people are eager to take, Covax, the global initiative designed to get shots at poorer nations, and African governments held back from giving orders.

In 2020 and 2021, “we were extremely excited to buy vaccines manufactured on the African continent by Aspen,” but J&J chose to supply from factories in other regions, said Gavi, the global vaccine alliance and a key supporter of Covax, in a answers to questions. “We are not purchasing additional doses at this time.”

J&J said in response to questions that it is “committed to supporting Africa’s response to Covid-19” and that “a significant proportion” of the doses that Aspen had made under contract had supplied the continent.

The lack of orders is an “economic failure,” said Abdou Salam Gueye, director of regional emergency preparedness and response to the WHO’s African office, at a conference call this month. “We will learn from it.”

While the WHO has not contributed financially to Aspen’s initiative, the World Bank and government agencies in the United States, France and Germany announced in June 600 million ($ 626 million) in funding for the company, saying it was necessary to ensure vaccines were produced. on the African continent.

Uncertain fate

“The situation in Aspen is very worrying,” Nkengasong said at a conference call this month. “What will become of the approximately 10 countries that have engaged in vaccine manufacturing in Africa?”

In a statement following a May 10 meeting, African heads of state urged Gavi, Covax and governments on the continent to prioritize the purchase of vaccines from African plants, saying they should commit to buying 30% of the continent’s production.

The Biovac Institute, a South African company in partnership with Pfizer to package and distribute 100 million doses of the company’s Covid vaccine in Africa annually, has spent around R300 million ($ 19 million) preparing. Morena Makhoana, CEO of the Cape Town-based company, said he was concerned about what was happening in Aspen.

As negotiations on the licensing agreement between Aspen and J&J have been underway for more than a year, “the world as a whole can not say we did not know there would be Aspen capacity,” Nicolaou said. Should Gavi and Covax fail to show interest soon, “the need for regional manufacturing will remain merely a political finesse that has no content,” he said.

© 2022 Bloomberg