With U.S. now in hand, BioNTech CEO looks for more vaccine production

With U.S. now in hand, BioNTech CEO looks for more vaccine production The chief executive of Germany's BioNTech SE said the biggest challenge facing it and partner Pfizer Inc now that their COVID-19 vaccine is authorized for use in the United States will be to scale up manufacturing to meet huge demand. Michael Erman U.S.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The chief executive of Germany’s BioNTech SE said the biggest challenge facing it and partner Pfizer Inc now that their COVID-19 vaccine is authorized for use in the United States will be to scale up manufacturing to meet huge demand.

“We need to solve the manufacturing challenge,” Ugur Sahin told Reuters in an interview. “It is very clear that more doses are needed. And we are dealing with that question - how to produce more doses.”

The companies have said they will produce up to 1.3 billion doses of the vaccine next year.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the vaccine for emergency use on Friday, after Britain became the first country to begin deploying the shot outside of clinical trials earlier in the week.

Sahin said he expects the companies will receive conditional approval from the European Medicines Agency by the end of the month and can begin rolling out vaccine in European countries early next year.

One way he hopes to boost supply would be by bringing on earlier than projected the 750 million-dose-a-year plant BioNTech bought from Novartis AG in Marburg, Germany. ...