Pfizer Promises to Double Supply of Vaccine Delivery

Pfizer Promises to Double Supply of Vaccine Delivery as Biden Pushes for Quicker

US President Joe Biden on Friday secured a commitment from Pfizer Inc to double the COVID-19 vaccine it will produce in the coming weeks, setting forth its goal of filling the nation’s inoculation stockpile by the summer.

Pharmaceutical CEO Albert Bourla took advantage of a visit by the US president to the company’s largest manufacturing facility to announce that he expects to more than double the around 5 million doses per week that the company provides. currently to the US government.

The Biden administration is trying to accelerate an unprecedented campaign to vaccinate the majority of American adults as local governments clamor for more doses and the virus kills thousands of Americans every day.

Biden said Friday he was confident he could exceed his goal of distributing 100 million COVID-19 injections during his first 100 days in office. But he also said that any semblance of normalcy may still be many months away.

“We are now on track to have a sufficient vaccine supply for all Americans by the end of July. That doesn’t mean it will be in the arms of all Americans, but there will be enough vaccine available, ”Biden said in a warehouse filled with hundreds of freezers, each with 360,000 doses of vaccine.

“I can’t give you a date when this crisis will end,” Biden said. But I can tell you: we are doing everything possible to make that day come sooner rather than later. ”

Less than 15% of the US population has been vaccinated against the highly contagious disease that has claimed nearly 500,000 lives in the United States.

Bourla said it is possible to increase supply due to improvements in manufacturing processes at the plant, better laboratory testing methods and the use of Biden’s powers under the Defense Production Act to speed up manufacturing.

During the visit to the Michigan plant, Biden challenged the company to deliver even earlier the 300 million doses of the vaccine it agreed to supply by the end of July, and the company is looking for ways to speed up production, Bourla said.

To that end, Pfizer said that by the end of the year it will add manufacturing capacity in Michigan, raw material production capacity in both Michigan and Connecticut, and add production lines to put the vaccine in vials in Kansas. It has also contracted with two US contract manufacturers to help produce the injections.

Biden also stressed vaccine production standards during the tour, as he encouraged Americans to get vaccinated. “I just did a tour where it’s being done,” he said. “It takes more time to verify safety than to make that vaccine. That’s how annoying they are. ”

Pfizer has said it will provide the US government with 100 million doses by the end of March and an additional 100 million by the end of May. The company has already provided 40 million doses to the United States government, as of February 17, Bourla said.

Pfizer is one of the largest employers in the Kalamazoo County area that Biden visited. Highly industrialized Michigan was key to Biden’s 2020 election victory over former President Donald Trump.

The US drugmaker has not yet met all of its global commitments on the supply of vaccines. As of Wednesday, it had yet to deliver to the European Union about 10 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine that expire in December, EU officials told Reuters.

Pfizer developed the two-dose vaccine with BioNTech SE from Germany.

Moderna Inc, which also produces the COVID-19 vaccine domestically, agreed to supply the United States with 300 million doses of its own similar two-shot vaccine by the end of July.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser, said Tuesday that demand still far exceeds supply at this time.

Jeff Williams, Mayor of Arlington, Texas, who met with Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in recent weeks, said his city of 400,000 was ready to vaccinate 40,000 people a day, but only had enough supply to administer 3,000 doses.