Pfizer expects to halve the amount of time it takes to reduce a group of COVID-19 vaccine from 110 days to an average of 60, as this makes the process more efficient and production is built up, the company told USA TODAY said.
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As the country revises its vaccination programs, the increase could help alleviate bottlenecks caused by vaccine shortages.
“We call it ‘Project Light Speed,’ and it’s called that for a reason,” said Chaz Calitri, Pfizer’s vice president of sterile injectable surgery operations, who runs the company in Kalamazoo, Michigan. “Just last month, we doubled production.”
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The increased speed and capacity is not unexpected, says Robert Van Exan, president of immunization policy and knowledge translation, a vaccine production consulting firm.
‘No one has ever produced mRNA vaccines on this scale, so you can make sure you have the bottom dollar the manufacturers teach. ‘I bet you every day they touch on some vaccine challenge, and every day they solve it, and it’s in their playbook,’ he said.
© Pfizer
The mRNA suite at Pfizer’s Andover, MA facility. This is where the mRNA is produced in a cell-free system using the DNA template from Chesterfield, MO.
From DNA to doses: The life cycles of the COVID-19 vaccine
Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is made at three Pfizer plants: starting in Chesterfield, Missouri, moving to Andover, Massachusetts, and ending in Kalamazoo, Michigan. As of Saturday, approximately 20.6 million doses of Pfizer vaccine have been administered nationwide.
Pfizer based its production system on how the vaccine was developed in the lab, Calitri said. Engineers will normally spend years improving efficiency and cost-effectiveness. This is not what happened to COVID-19.
“We just went straight to commercial production,” Calitri said.
As vials of vaccine began to come off the production line, engineers began to investigate how production could work faster and better.
“We’ve made a lot of improvements,” he said.
Production is getting faster. For example, the DNA that initiates the vaccination process only took 16 days; soon it will last nine or ten. Although quality control and testing have accelerated, FDA officials say FDA regulations and best manufacturing practices are still being adhered to.
Along with improving speed, Pfizer is also increasing production by adding production lines in all three plants.
As the vaccine effort continues, more efficiencies are expected.
“There will be drastic shifts in the way we do business,” Calitri said of what he has experienced since his boss first called him on March 20, 2020, saying the Kalamazoo plant would play a key role in the rapid production of the vaccine. .
“We have just demonstrated to ourselves that we can go from a phone call in March to now 50 to 60 million doses.”
Contact Elizabeth Weise at [email protected]
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pfizer expects to reduce COVID-19 vaccine production time by almost 50% as production increases, increasing efficiency
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