Pfizer to ship fewer vaccine vials after additional doses are found

• Pfizer will ship fewer vials of COVID-19 vaccine to the United States after additional doses are found.
• The company pushed the FDA to officially recognize the extra doses found in each vial.
• Some pharmacists say they are still struggling to extract the extra doses.
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Last month, pharmacists across the United States found it a pleasant surprise when they discovered that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine vials contained additional doses.

As a result, Pfizer will now ship fewer vaccine vials to the United States to account for this, according to a New York Times report. The pharmaceutical company has pledged to deliver 200 million doses of the vaccine to the United States by the end of July. Additional doses found in the initial allocations will now count towards this number.

Pfizer charges by the dose and for weeks it reportedly pushed U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials to formally recognize that the vials contain six (and sometimes seven) doses, instead of five.

Earlier this month, the FDA obliged, changing the wording of the emergency use authorization for the vaccine, according to The Times. Pfizer officials argued that the distinction was necessary, since the federal government contract required payment by the dose.

But some pharmacists say they had difficulty extracting these extra doses because this process requires a special syringe.

“Now there’s more pressure to make sure you get that sixth dose,” Michael Ganio, senior director of pharmacy practice and quality at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists told The Times.

Pfizer chief executive Dr Albert Bourla said the sixth additional dose allowed the company to further expand its vaccine supply. Pfizer originally estimated it could manufacture 1.3 billion doses by 2021, but the discovery of the additional doses may have played a role in the company’s most recent estimate of two billion doses by the end of the year. ‘year.

When pharmacists first discovered the extra doses, there was both excitement and confusion. Some even threw away the extra doses because they were not allowed to use them, according to the newspaper. But the FDA quickly offered both clearance and instructions for using the additional doses.

At the time, the extra doses seemed to suggest that instead of the 100 million doses Pfizer initially promised the United States at the end of March, the country could end up with as much as 120 million, a good news in a context of chaotic vaccine deployment. but Pfizer demanded that the additional doses be counted as part of its existing contract instead.

“Pfizer will make a lot of money from these vaccines, and the US government assumed a lot of the initial risk in this case, so I don’t know why Pfizer didn’t just continue to fill its supply as planned, even though It meant a bit of overproduction, ”Dr. Aaron S. Kesselheim, professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, told The Times.

After weeks of a reported language dispute between Pfizer and the FDA, the agency officially amended the vaccine’s data sheet to specify that six doses were included in each vial.

The number of Pfizer vaccines allocated to each state could be based on this new language as early as next week, the Times reported.