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The US Food and Drug The chief executive of Germany’s BioNTech SE said the biggest obstacle facing it and partner Pfizer Inc now their COVID-19 vaccine is authorized for use in the United States is to scale up manufacturing to meet huge demand.
“We need to fix the manufacturing challenge,” Ugur Sahin told Reuters in an interview. “It is extremely clear that more doses are necessary. And we are dealing with that question – how to produce more doses.”
The companies have said they’ll produce up to 1.3 billion doses of this vaccine next year.
The US Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccine for emergency use on Friday, after Britain became the first country to start deploying the shot out of clinical trials earlier in the week.
1 way he hopes to boost supply is by bringing on earlier than projected that the 750 million-dose-a-year plant BioNTech bought from Novartis AG in Marburg, Germany.
BioNTech had said it would begin producing the vaccine there in the first half of 2021, and Sahin said they’re working to get it up and running on an expedited timeline.
“The baseline strategy is 1.3 billion doses,” Sahin said. “And we’re working on an extended plan. I can’t let you know at the moment what’s possible and how much we can expand the scale but we will attempt to do it ”
Supply of the vaccine will be limited at first in the United States, which has a population of approximately 330 million. The US government has ordered 100 million doses of this two-dose vaccine and could negotiate for more.
In data released this week, Pfizer and BioNTech said their vaccine started conferring some protection to recipients even before they received the second shot. It seemed to start to show some efficacy around 12 days after the first shot.
Sahin said he was amazed by the data:”We know that the immune response is significantly promoted following the second dose.”
He said the companies have not decided yet whether to appraise a single-dose version of the vaccine.
“This is going to be a discussion that we will surely have with our partners Pfizer,” he said.
