Pfizer cuts by half the doses of the COVID-19 vaccine it expects to make in 2020. Pfizer initially forecast to distribute 100 million of its vaccine, already licensed in the UK, but now commits to producing only 50 million by 2020
Pharmaceutical company Pfizer has cut the number of doses of its coronavirus vaccine that it expects to manufacture and distribute during the rest of the year by half this Thursday, due to problems with the supply chain, the company informed today.
Initially, Pfizer predicted to distribute 100 million of its COVID-19 vaccine, already authorized in the United Kingdom and awaiting imminent authorization in the United States and Europe, but now only commits to produce 50 million before the end of the year.
However, Pfizer maintains its projections of producing more than 1 billion doses through 2021, when the vaccine will begin to be injected into the general population and the real global campaign to immunize against the pandemic will begin.
Pfizer: “We’re late. Some of the first batches of the raw materials did not meet the standards.
“We are late. Some of the first batches of the raw materials did not meet the standards. We have solved it, but we have been left without time to reach the projections,” recognized a responsible of Pfizer to the newspaper ‘The Wall Street Journal’.
The vaccine depends on raw materials that come from the United States and Europe. However, reaching the necessary scale to mass produce the vials is a process that started to get complicated in November.
The vaccines require several sophisticated ingredients, such as antiviral agents, antiseptics, sterile water, or SARS-CoV-2 RNA fragment.
A Pfizer spokesperson recalled that the pace at which the vaccine has been researched and developed is unprecedented.
In just 10 months, the pharmaceutical company has tested the response to the vaccine while launching a major operation to manufacture and distribute it worldwide, something that usually takes at least a decade.
Testing of the vaccine with 44,000 people worldwide has shown that it is effective in 95% of COVID-19 cases. Assembly and distribution of the preparation will be done from two Pfizer centers in Michigan (USA) and Puurs (Belgium).
The news made to fall in stock market a 1,74% to Pfizer, stopped the earnings in the Dow Jones and made to go back to negative territory the S&P 500, that went directed to another record.
