BioNTech CEO says vaccine production must go even faster

Photographer: Morry Gash / AFP / Getty Images

A year after Covid-19 was declared a pandemic, the world would do well to prepare for the next one.

That’s the warning BioNTech SE Chief Executive Officer Ugur Sahin, the researcher behind one of the first approved coronavirus vaccines. And while the virus still truncates much of daily life around the world, Sahin says Covid-19 isn’t even the worst outbreak imaginable. Future pandemics could be even more devastating, and being ready is key, he said in an interview.

The goal should be for drug makers and governments to have manufacturing capacity to immunize the entire world within three months of an injection being developed, Sahin said. Given the state of current vaccine campaigns, with large parts of the world’s population still waiting for a shot, this is an ambitious goal. To get there, Sahin proposes a public-private partnership, comparing the massive expenses required to pay for insurance.

“We were not prepared to produce enough doses for the entire population of this planet,” said Sahin of the current campaign. “That has to change. We must not only be prepared to develop a vaccine quickly, but also to produce adequate doses. “

Sahin’s cautionary tone comes amid a faltering vaccination campaign on BioNTech’s home field, featuring Officials of the European Union spar with AstraZeneca Plc about one delay of promised deliveries. BioNTech and its American partner Pfizer Inc. is expected to ship the lion’s share of the 400 million doses the EU is counting on to accelerate its immunization campaign in the second quarter. But for now, only about 7% of Europeans have received at least one dose – compared to about 19% of people in the US. Most countries in Africa hasn’t even started yet.

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More than 334 million shots delivered: Covid-19 Tracker

Vaccine makers as a whole will produce enough doses for the entire world next year, Sahin predicted in a Bloomberg Television interview earlier this week. Pfizer and BioNTech could have the capacity to make 3 billion shots in 2022, he said.

Sahin, 55, and his wife, BioNTech Co-Founder Ozlem Tureci, 54, have spent most of their careers pushing the boundaries of cancer research until the pandemic put them in the spotlight last year. The messenger RNA technology they helped pioneer – with Pfizer on the project last March – turned out to be one of the best and fastest ways to create a vaccine to fight the pandemic.

The The World Health Organization declared Covid a pandemic on March 11, 2020 as the disease spread to Europe, the US and elsewhere. That same month, countries across Europe, starting with Italy, imposed the first of a series of lockdowns. The virus has infected nearly 120 million people and killed more than 2.6 million people.

The Pfizer BioNTech vaccine was the first to be approved in the US and Europe and was issued an emergency permit in December. The pandemic has made BioNTech, which had no drugs on the market until last year, become a household name. Pfizer has predicted $ 15 billion in revenue this year from the Covid vaccine.

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