Vaccine Nationalism

The world’s governments are vying to secure doses before their peers can. It’s already getting ugly

- Vernon Silver

In a valley south of Rome where tourists rarely tread, the scene playing out on a recent morning was reminiscent of the climax of Star Wars, with the rebel pilots preparing for battle. Just past the vineyards, inside a sprawling modern pharmaceutical complex, clutches of young women and men marched down corridors in steel-toed boots, mint-green jumpsuits, and surgical masks. One group of cadets watched a training video. Another took turns assembling and disassembling equipment. Behind glass walls, droid like robots rolled around performing automated tasks.

This Italian version of a rebel base is an outpost of an American company, Catalent Inc. The Death Star is Covid-19, which devastated this country in early spring. Catalent has a contract to fill tiny glass vials with as many as 450 million doses of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca Plc vaccine, which in late May became the first coronavirus candidate to enter large-scale human trials. The stakes, perils, and opportunities could hardly be higher for Italy: going from the West’s first victim to, potentially, having within its borders almost a quarter of Earth’s supply of a vaccine.

If the mission succeeds, the precious hoard will start piling up next month in a refrigerated warehouse at the Catalent plant. By early November, Italian regulators should be in a position to release the first doses to the international market, according to Mario Gargiulo, global head of biologics operations for Catalent, which is based in Somerset, N.J.