No. AstraZeneca got involved at the request of the British government. They were not the first choice, GSK was (no 1. vaccine company in the world), but for wha

No. AstraZeneca got involved at the request of the British government. They were not the first choice, GSK was (no 1. vaccine company in the world), but for whatever reason GSK passed, so AstraZeneca, as a British (and Swedish) national champion was chosen, even though they don't have vaccine experience. There is an excellent investigative report by Le Figaro (in French) that details the many issues the vaccine faced: https://www.lefigaro.fr/sciences/astrazeneca-le-laboratoire-ambitieux-qui-est-devenu-la-bete-noire-de-l-europe-20210317 https://www.lefigaro.fr/sciences/astrazeneca-le-laboratoire-... These include friction between AZ and Oxford, the latter insisted on retaining much more control than they would normally have, and this led to serious flaws in the design of experiments for the trials, including not having sufficient numbers of over-65. Furthermore, they mixed samples with different inoculation protocols, raising all sorts of red flags within the scientific community. It does seem the vaccine is effective and safe, but the unforced methodology errors did them no favors, and explain why the FDA and EMA are taking an exceptionally hard look at the data. Furthermore, production is outsourced to a number of companies with varying level of expertise, and they are poorly supervised by AZ, for instance EU commissioner Thierry Breton performed an inspection in the Belgian subcontractor that has been having problems that led to AZ not meeting its contractual commitments to the EU (and a diplomatic crisis between the EU and UK), and found production and quality control issues the AZ headquarters were unaware of.