London: Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE raised their Covid-19 vaccine production target for this year to 2 billion shots, as the partners respond to a global rush of countries seeking to order more doses.
The drugmakers have already committed more than half that capacity, BioNTech said in a presentation filed Monday. A more than 50% boost from the previous 2021 target of 1.3 billion doses, the increase incorporates a label change that will allow doctors to extract six doses instead of five from each vaccine vial, BioNTech said.
Vaccine supply has been under intense scrutiny as Europe faces a new, faster-spreading variant of the virus that first emerged in the U.K. and the global death toll approaches 2 million. The European Union last week sealed a deal to double its supply of Pfizer-BioNTech shots to as many as 600 million.
A new production site in Marburg, Germany, expected to become operational by the end of February, will be able to make as many as 750 million doses per year, according to the presentation. BioNTech said it’s also seeking to add suppliers and contract manufacturers and improve its production processes.
The partners had shipped 32.9 million vaccine doses as of Jan. 10, BioNTech said. Some of the 50 million shots produced in 2020 remain in deep-freeze storage because countries weren’t yet ready to receive them, a BioNTech spokeswoman said. For example, the partners had reserved 12.5 million doses of last year’s production capacity for the EU — but since the bloc’s approval of the vaccine came late in the year, not all the doses were shipped.
The promise for a production boost comes as U.S. President-Elect Joe Biden’s team has said he’ll distribute more of the available doses of coronavirus vaccines once he takes office, rather than holding back half of existing supply to guarantee the second shots needed to reach maximum potency.
The move, announced by Biden’s office Friday and supported by a group of Democratic governors, represents a gamble by the incoming administration that there will be enough supply available to ensure timely second shots for both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.
BioNTech rose as much as 4.6% in German trading, while Pfizer was little changed in U.S. premarket trading.- Bloomberg
Also read: What is the new coronavirus strain in UK and will vaccines work on it?