Covid-19 vaccine production in US races ahead

Pfizer discovered how the scarce supplies of special filters needed for the vaccine manufacturing process can be stretched by recycling them. Moderna reduced the time it took to inspect and package newly manufactured vials of its vaccine.

The companies – along with Johnson & Johnson

which recently launched a Covid-19 vaccine – are also partnering with other companies to further increase production.

In addition, the U.S. government has helped vaccine makers access supplies under the Defense Production Act, suppliers and government officials say. The Biden administration said this month it was using the law to provide $ 105 million in funding to help Merck & Co. help make doses of J & J’s Covid-19 vaccine and speed up the materials used in its production.

The improvements and addition of J & J’s shot promise to increase supplies in the US as health authorities accelerate efforts to inoculate enough people to lift restrictions and reopen schools, businesses and other institutions.

According to analyst estimates from Evercore ISI, monthly US production for the three approved vaccines is expected to reach 132 million doses in March, nearly triple the 48 million in February.

“We can really expect a very substantial increase in supply over the next month,” said Eric Toner, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Early bottlenecks in purchasing materials ‘have been resolved’.

The global supply of Covid-19 vaccines is also increasing, although access to supplies and the pace of vaccinations vary widely from country to country. Companies such as AstraZeneca PLC and the Serum Institute of India expect to have produced billions of doses of Covid-19 vaccines by the end of this year.

Vaccines are crucial, health experts say, to protect people from severe cases of Covid-19 and to overcome the pandemic and all its limitations.

In December, Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were released in the US. Still, initial stocks were limited and the rollout started faltering. States limited doses to certain groups, such as the elderly, health professionals, and those with high-risk medical conditions.

However, both the production and administration of shots have gained momentum in recent weeks. Now, an average of 2.5 million people in the US are vaccinated daily, up from about 500,000 in early January, although many who want a vaccine still can’t get it.

The increased output should be enough to fully vaccinate 76 million people in the US in March, another 75 million in April, and then 89 million more in May, according to Evercore ISI analysts estimates. The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines require two doses.

According to Morgan Stanley, 75% of Americans 12 and older must be vaccinated by midsummer. The vaccines are not currently approved for those under the age of 16, but companies may have results this spring for studies of the injections in adolescents 12 and older, which, if positive, could lead to vaccinations for that age group. The companies are also starting to test the vaccines in children under the age of 12, but results from those studies aren’t expected until late this year.

With production on the rise, President Biden said on March 11 that he wants states to be eligible for all adults by May 1 and that the US should have enough supplies for all adults by the end of May.

Moderna, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, took about three months to make the first 20 million doses of its vaccine last year, but now it’s making about 40 million a month for the US, said Juan Andres, Chief Technical Operations and Quality Officer. in an interview.

He said the company would likely peak at 50 million a month in the summer.

Moderna laid much of the foundation for its manufacturing capacity last year by adding floor space and new equipment to its factory in Norwood, Massachusetts, and another facility in Portsmouth, NH, managed by its contract manufacturing partner Lonza Ltd.

However, it was unable to produce at maximum capacity straight out of the gate due to the need to introduce new equipment and processes in stages. Moderna was still training newly hired workers and was experiencing issues such as equipment failure and delays in obtaining replacement parts such as filters.

“There has not been a single week since we started that we have had no problems,” said Mr Andres. “When making medicines, it is absolutely impossible not to have any problems at the beginning. It takes time.”

Now the company has trained workers and figured out how to tackle challenges such as getting raw materials to factories faster, he said. The company has also looked for ways to speed up the process, including reducing the time it takes after a batch to be ready to inspect and package bottles.

It plans to speed up output by increasing the number of doses in each vial from 10 to 15, something that will require US regulatory approval, Mr Andres said.

“We’re in the zone,” he said. “I love our opportunities to keep performing.”

According to a Pfizer spokeswoman, New York-based Pfizer has more than doubled its weekly US production of Covid-19 vaccine doses to more than 13 million, from five million in early February.

Pfizer increased output in part by finding that it was quickly going through the inventory of certain circular filters used in the manufacturing process and could not get more from its supplier as quickly as needed. The filters remove certain components from the vaccine during production.

The company began recycling the filters so that it could reuse each two or three times, said Chaz Calitri, Pfizer’s vice president of operations for sterile injectables for the US and Europe.

The company also faced limitations in obtaining the tiny fat particles known as lipids from third-party suppliers that form the protective shell around the genetic material in the vaccine. So Pfizer began manufacturing the material at its plants in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Groton, Conn., And completed three batches, Mr. Calitri said.

And the company added more high-speed bottle filling lines to its Kalamazoo facility and will expand bottle filling to another facility in McPherson, Kan. The lines can fill up to 575 vials per minute, said Mr Calitri.

“We’re far from done,” he said. “There’s no question that we’ll be blowing 13 million a week and going much higher in the very near future.”

Johnson & Johnson’s initial delivery, when the company’s vaccine was approved late last month, was lower than what federal officials expected, but analysts expect a more stable output to emerge within weeks that will contribute to the overall dose offering .

J&J stimulates its own production and collaborates with other companies, including Merck, to further expand. A J&J spokesperson said the company is on track to deliver a total of 20 million doses for use in the US by the end of March.

—Jared S. Hopkins contributed to this article

Write to Peter Loftus at [email protected]