Dr. Natasha Kathuria discusses the distribution and efficacy of coronavirus vaccines as Novavax reports the trial results.
Global pharmaceutical company Novartis announced on Friday that it has signed an early agreement to increase production capacity for the Pfizer BioNTech coronavirus vaccine.
The company plans to take BioNTech’s mRNA ingredients, load them into vials at its site in Stein, Switzerland, and send them back to BioNTech for worldwide distribution, according to a company announcement.
Work begins in the second quarter of 2021, pending final agreements.
VACCINATIONS ARE KEY TO OUR ECONOMIC RECOVERY, S FK FED CHAIR POWELL
“Novartis has mobilized in several areas to support the global pandemic response,” Steffen Lang, head of Novartis’ technical operations, said in the news release published Friday. As a company that proposes medicine with advanced therapy platforms, we are committed to leveraging our manufacturing capabilities to support the supply of COVID-19 vaccines and therapies worldwide. We expect this to be the first of a number of such agreements. ”
Novartis said its manufacturing team is in late talks with numerous companies to help manufacturing tasks such as ‘mRNA production, therapeutic protein production’ [and] raw material production ”for vaccines and therapeutic agents against the new virus, which to date has claimed nearly 2.2 million lives worldwide, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
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The Pfizer-BioNTech dual-dose COVID-19 vaccine continues to roll out around the world and is responsible for more than 14 million vaccinations in the US, while another 11.7 million Americans received a vaccine developed by Moderna, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).