Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jcfariadias 1954 days ago
You could be very well organised in terms of rollout and distribution. But every European country is having the same problem - shortage of production and provider's incapacity to distribute it without fail. Israel case is unique, because they payed more per vaccine, thus guaranteeing the supply needed to be able to mass vaccinate the population.
2 comments
1996 1954 days ago
> they payed more per vaccine, thus guaranteeing the supply needed to be able to mass vaccinate

Who could have guessed that paying the right price would guarantee the supply of a rare commodity everyone would want? :)

link
timrichard 1954 days ago
Quite right. And on the flip side, who would have guessed that haggling down the price of a super cheap at-cost AZ dose and playing hardball on liability when everyone else was bending over backwards would result in delays and supply problems for the EU...
link
hef19898 1954 days ago
Who would have thought ordering twice as many doses as needed wouldn't be enough for some? And who would have thought that ordering more, and above manufacturing capacity, would reduce availability?
link
timrichard 1954 days ago
Overestimating doses required allows you some room for manoeuvre. Plans can change, like when the Sanofi/Merck/Pasteur vaccine tuned out to be a dud and was abandoned within the EU.

Manufacturing capacity at the continental AZ facilities have been hit by teething issues. There were also teething issues at AZ's UK facilities, but the impact was less because the order was placed three months earlier in the UK.

link
scrollaway 1954 days ago
And yet, we're ahead of schedule here: https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/belgium-all-news/154717/a...

Like I said in another reply: if you're ahead of schedule when your supplier is dry, your schedule is awful. Isn't it? It makes no sense otherwise.

If we had 1 million vaccines to distribute right now, we couldn't. We have 150 "vaccination centers", all of which are converted testing centers but which makes only 10 percent or so of them full time; most of them are open a couple days a week. If you crunch down the numbers you end up very optimistically at the ability to distribute 250-350k vaccines per month... In a country roughly the same population as israel.

Edit: i don't even sort of understand why I'm getting downvoted for sharing plain numbers.

link