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FRANKFURT AM MAIN, Germany – German company BioNTech said on Friday it was rushing to speed up production of its COVID-19 vaccine in Europe, to fill the “void” left by the lack of other approved vaccines.
The vaccine developed by BioNTech and its American partner Pfizer was the first to be approved in the European Union at the end of December.
Countries like Britain, Canada and the United States approved the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine earlier and have since also given the green light to gunfire from the American company Moderna or Oxford / AstraZeneca, leaving the campaign to EU inoculation lagging behind.
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“The current situation is not rosy, there is a hole because there are no other approved vaccines and we have to fill this gap with our vaccine,” said BioNTech co-founder Ugur Sahin every week at Der Spiegel.
Doses of the Pfizer-Biontech COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine at a vaccination center in Magdeburg, eastern Germany, December 27, 2020 (Ronny Hartmann / POOL / AFP)
Criticism of the slow deployment of vaccines in Europe has intensified in recent days.
In Germany, where the focus has been on inoculating the elderly in nursing homes, senior doctors have complained that hospital staff are left waiting for their injections while on the groups. priority.
France has seen similar complaints, prompting the government to announce that health workers over the age of 50 could get vaccinated from Monday – earlier than expected.
Part of the problem is that the EU placed a relatively small order of 300 million doses for its 27 member states, and the contract was not signed until November, later than other countries.
BioNTech founder Ozlem Tureci, who is Sahin’s wife, told Spiegel that the EU had assumed there would be “a basket of different suppliers” to choose from, given the global race to develop one. end of pandemic.
“Such an approach makes sense. But at one point it became clear that many would be unable to deliver quickly, ”she said.
This video capture from a livestream of German biotech company BioNTech during their press conference to provide an update on their COVID-19 vaccine development program on December 22, 2020 at their headquarters in Mainz, in the West of Germany, shows (LR) Chief Business and Commercial Officer Sean Marett, co-founder of BioNTech and scientist Ozlem Tureci, CEO and co-founder of BioNTech Ugur Sahin and CFO Sierk Poetting. (BioNTech / AFP)
Sahin said BioNTech aims to commission a new manufacturing facility in the German city of Marburg in February, “well ahead of schedule,” which should then be able to produce an additional 250 million doses in the first half of 2021.
Tureci said it has also reached agreements with five pharmaceutical manufacturers in Europe to increase production, and negotiations with other specialist companies are underway.
“By the end of January, we should have details of what we can produce and how much more we can produce,” Sahin said.
BioNTech and Pfizer initially aimed to deliver 1.3 billion doses worldwide this year, enough to immunize 650 million people, as each person needs two injections for the vaccine to reach its maximum effect.
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