The time per batch from start to finish was originally about 110 days, but as engineers learn how to make the process more efficient, the company thinks it will get down to just 60 days per batch. But no matter how much engineers like Calitri have worked to shave weeks, days and hours off the vaccine-making process, it still takes time.įor Pfizer-BioNTech, a batch can make anywhere from 1 to 3 million doses of vaccine per production run, which the company says will soon take just 60 days. "It’s not like (making) orange juice."Īll the competitive COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers have been pushing to produce more doses faster. "People don’t understand, manufacturing vaccines is extremely complicated," AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said at a recent news conference. Now, the company is struggling to meet its production commitments in Europe, because starting up a factory in Belgium proved harder than anticipated. Not enough older people were included to make it clear whether they'd be protected. Merck, another pharmaceutical giant, dropped out of the race recently when its early vaccine candidates failed to live up to their promise.Īnd AstraZeneca, which is collaborating on a vaccine with Oxford University in England, has stumbled a few times. In a global trial, effectiveness figures were muddied by giving some participants a different vaccine dose. 11.īut the vaccine development and manufacturing process doesn't always go smoothly. The two teams, both of which use a technology called mRNA, have delivered more than 59 million doses to the federal government since Dec. Pfizer, which partnered with a German company, BioNTech, had a 44,000-person clinical trial finished before Thanksgiving. Moderna had a vaccine ready to be tested in people in just over two months. The two vaccines rolling out across the country since late December have made the vaccine development and production process look easy. ![]() "It is science with established principles, but sometimes is more idiosyncratic than art." ![]() There's variability in the raw materials, the microorganisms needed to grow vaccine products, the conditions of the culture in which those microorganisms are grown, and more, Yadav said. Plasmid manufacturing suite at Pfizer's Chesterfield, Mo., site.
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