Pfizer cuts vaccine production in half this month

Pharmaceuticals company Pfizer and German company BioNTech said in a statement Thursday that they would reduce the number of dose of their COVID vaccine that they planned to make this month. The announcement comes after the UK communicated the drug’s authorization and the EU said it plans to approve it on December 29.

The company justified the troubled decision in the Supply Chain. We’re late. Some of the first batches of raw materials did not meet standards. We have solved it, but we don’t have time to meet the projections anymore, ”a Pfizer official told the newspaper. The Wall Street Journal.

Pfizer had planned a first batch of 100 million vaccines for the countries with which it has signed a distribution contract. Among them are the UK and EU countries. Spain has contracted the supply of 20.9 million doses of this drug.

// Coronavirus vaccine: Pfizer and BioNTech authorized in UK

After the latest purchase authorizations approved by the Council of Ministers on Tuesday, Spain expects 52,707,888 doses vaccines from Janssen, Moderna and CureVac, 31.6 million from AstraZeneca and 20.9 million from Pfizer-BioNTech, bringing the total to 105 million.

Although almost all vaccines are double-dose, this amount exceeds what is needed to immunize the entire Spanish population. However, the reduction announced by Pfizer could alter the initial vaccination plans.

Pfizer is awaiting authorization for its drug in the European Union and also in the United States, where the imminent start of vaccination campaigns was expected at the end of the year or the beginning of the next. However, the pharmaceutical company’s production problems made it give up reaching 100 million doses expected in the next 27 days.

The North American company, which developed the vaccine in collaboration with BioNTech, believes it will be able to address the problems identified and maintains that it will be able to produce 1 billion vaccines throughout 2021.

The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine were the first to offer an efficacy figure (95%) with full statistical validity, thanks to a trial with approximately 44,000 participants and 170 infections among them. Its foundation is the RNA, the molecule needed to transform the information in DNA into protein.

This system, different from inoculation of an attenuated virus, is a complex system that requires many ingredients with unique characteristics that the industry could not guarantee within the timeframe set by Pfizer for the first mass production. The assembly and distribution of the preparation will be carried out from two Pfizer centers in Michigan and Puurs (Belgium).

Modern and Oxford

The other company with a vaccine with effective results and also based on RNA, Modern, said it expects to have between 100 and 125 million doses available in the first quarter of 2021. Of these, just over 85% will be distributed in the United States. Throughout the year, like Pfizer, it plans to produce 1 billion.

For his part, the British pharmacist AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, after announcing an effectiveness of between 62% and 90%, depending on the dose, continues to work on the realization of studies to remove the doubts expressed by the scientific chief of the American operation to accelerate the development of a vaccine, Moncef Slaoui.

// Coronavirus | Oxford and AstraZeneca announced their vaccine was 70-90% effective, depending on dose

The scientist pointed out that the 90% efficacy was seen in a single branch of the Oxford clinical trial with around 2,700 people, all under the age of 55. The neuroscientist Menelas Pangalos, Vice President of AstraZeneca, confirmed this fact. The British entities have concealed the issue of age in their statements, so that the true effectiveness of the injection in the elderly, the most vulnerable, has been called into question.