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Pfizer Inc. will be able to deliver 200 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine to the United States by the end of May, two months ahead of schedule, according to its executive.
CEO Albert Bourla said on Tuesday that the drugmaker and its partner, BioNTech SE, would be able to deliver the doses to the United States well before the July 31 deadline due to a change in the vaccine’s label. that allows healthcare providers to extract an additional dose from each vial.
The six-dose per vial count went into effect Monday and applies to future supply contracts, according to a representative from Pfizer.
In the United States, Pfizer and BioNTech will deliver 120 million doses in the first quarter, 20 million more than originally promised, Bourla said in an interview with Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait at the Year summit. Ahead, which was held practically this year.
Bourla added that Pfizer and BioNTech would receive more doses in the European Union before the end of the second quarter. The companies’ vaccination schedule requires two doses to provide complete protection against symptomatic cases of Covid-19.
New York-based Pfizer provided governments with 36 commercially available needle and syringe combinations to be able to extract the last dose from the vials, Bourla said. The drug giant knew its vials contained Until six doses of the vaccine, he added, noting that earlier this year he had to generate data to get approval from government authorities around the world for its use.
Pfizer’s change in schedule comes amid heightened anxiety over slow vaccine deployment and concerns about a limited supply of doses. Bourla said the US vaccination campaign has been particularly slow in its first few weeks, although he expects the pace of the doses administered to improve.
Vaccine deployment
Vaccinations in the United States began on December 14, just days after the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was cleared for emergency use. Moderna Inc.’s vaccine, which uses similar messenger RNA technology, was cleared shortly after. So far, 23.5 million hits have been given, according to Bloomberg Vaccine Tracking. During the past week, an average of 1.25 million doses per day have been administered.
In total, Pfizer and BioNTech have announced plans to produce 2 billion doses in 2021, a 50% increase from estimates given last year. As the companies plan to ramp up production with help from additional contract manufacturers, the new target also takes into account a label change that allows doctors to extract six doses instead of five from each vial of vaccine. .
Bourla said it was important to administer the second dose of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine within the appropriate time window evaluated and confirmed by clinical trials, which is 19 to 42 days. There is no data to suggest that the vaccine will be effective if a second dose is given after 42 days, Bourla said.
Yet some governments have been willing to compromise with lower immunity to vaccinate more people.
“Every government, of course, has to deal with a very complicated situation,” he said.
Bourla said the company was in talks with various governments for additional doses, but declined to say if any such talks were taking place with the Biden administration.
Booster for variants
As two new spots of the virus spread around the world, Pfizer and BioNTech are also developing booster shots that may protect against various mutations.
“Whenever a new variant appears, we should be able to test whether or not [our vaccine] is effective, ”Bourla said. “Once we find something that is not as effective, we will very, very quickly be able to produce a booster dose which will be a small variation of the current vaccine.”
Bourla’s comments follow reports that Moderna is working on a similar recall. Moderna said on Monday that its vaccine would protect against two known variants of the coronavirus, but it was planning to start human studies of a booster for a strain from South Africa that could lower immunity more quickly.
While Bourla does not expect the coronavirus to be eradicated, he said the pharmaceutical industry has the tools to make the virus like the flu.
“This means that it would not disrupt our lives or our socio-economy. We must be very vigilant on the strains that exist and very vigilant on the vaccination of people, ”said Bourla.
People might need an annual single-dose Covid vaccine that is developed every year to fight any strain that is expected to circulate, he said. Pfizer is working on next-generation versions of its vaccine that have easier storage requirements for this purpose.
– With the help of Drew Armstrong
(Updates with additional details and context throughout)
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