Coronavirus: Pfizer slows rate of supply of …

The American laboratory Pfizer has confirmed that its COVID-19 vaccine shipments will slow in late January or early February. to make changes to the production process to speed up the pace in the following weeks.

“Pfizer is working hard to deliver more doses than initially planned this year with a new declared objective of 2 billion doses in 2021 “, justified the group in a message which it addressed to the press agency AFP.

“There may be fluctuations in orders and shipping times at our facilities in Puurs (Belgium) immediately to allow a rapid increase in production volumes, ”the company said, without specifying which markets would be affected by the drop in deliveries.

“While this will temporarily affect shipments from late January to early February, it will allow for a significant increase in the doses available to patients in late February and March,” Pfizer concluded.

European countries on alert

“The temporary reduction will affect all European countries. It is not yet clear how long it will take Pfizer to resume its maximum production capacity, which will drop from 1,300 to 2 billion doses, ”the Norwegian Institute of Public Health said in a statement.

The institute did not provide details on the extent of the supply reduction, but indicated that Norway will receive 36,075 doses of the 43,875 planned next week, 17.8% less. In turn, he stressed that to compensate for this decrease, the vaccine reserves created after the reception of the first doses will be used.

Germany joined Norway and warned that the delivery of the coronavirus vaccines from Pfizer and BioNTech companies had been delayed by 3 to 4 weeks due to work at a manufacturing plant in Belgium.

“The European Commission and, through it, EU Member States have recently been informed that Pfizer will not be able to deliver the volume of deliveries already committed in the next 3-4 weeks due to modifications at the Puurs plant“, reported the, reported the German Ministry of Health.

Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Sweden protested with a joint letter, in which they said the situation was “unacceptable” and “undermined the credibility of the vaccination process”.