US vaccine manufacturing for Covid-19 runs ahead

Pfizer figured out how to stretch the scarce supplies of special filters needed for the vaccine production process by recycling them. Moderna has reduced the time needed to inspect and pack the newly manufactured vials of its vaccine.

Companies – together with Johnson & Johnson,

which recently launched a Covid-19 vaccine – is also teaming up with other companies to further increase production.

In addition, the US government has helped vaccine manufacturers have access to supplies under the Defense Production Act, say suppliers and government officials. The Biden administration said this month that it used the law to provide $ 105 million in funding to help Merck & Co. produce doses of J&J’s Covid-19 vaccine and to streamline the materials used in its production.

Improvements and additions to the J&J injection promise to increase supplies in the United States as health officials accelerate efforts to inoculate enough people to lift restrictions and reopen schools, businesses and other establishments.

U.S. monthly production for the three authorized vaccines is expected to reach 132 million doses in March, almost triple the 48 million doses in February, according to estimates by Evercore ISI analysts.

“We really should expect over the next month or so to see a very substantial increase in supply” in the United States, said Eric Toner, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety.

The global supply of Covid-19 vaccines is also increasing, although access to supplies and the pace of vaccinations vary widely by country. Companies like AstraZeneca PLC and the Serum Institute of India hope 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 overcome the pandemic and all its restrictions.

In December, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were released in the United States. However, initial supplies were limited and the launch started tentatively. It affirms doses restricted to certain groups, such as the elderly, health professionals and people with high-risk medical conditions.

However, both photo production and administration have increased in recent weeks. Now, about 2.5 million people in the United States are vaccinated daily, on average, against 500,000 in early January, although many who want a vaccine still cannot get it.

The increase in production should be enough to fully vaccinate 76 million people in the United States in March, another 75 million in April and an additional 89 million in May, according to estimates by Evercore ISI analysts. The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines require two doses.

In the middle of the summer, 75% of Americans aged 12 and over should be vaccinated, according to Morgan Stanley. Vaccines are not currently authorized for children under 16, but companies may have results this spring for vaccine studies in adolescents 12 years and older, which, if positive, could lead to vaccinations for that age group. Companies are also beginning to test vaccines on children under 12, but the results of these studies are not expected until the end of this year.

With production rising, President Biden said on March 11 that he wants states to expand eligibility for all adults by May 1 and said the United States should have sufficient supply for all adults by the end of May.

Moderna, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, took about three months to make the first 20 million doses of its vaccine last year, but is now making about 40 million a month to the United States, said Juan Andres, head of technical operations and quality director. in an interview.

He said the company is likely to peak production at 50 million a month by summer.

Moderna launched much of the base for its production capacity last year, adding space and new equipment to its factory in Norwood, Massachusetts, and another factory in Portsmouth, NH, operated by its outsourced manufacturing partner Lonza Ltd.

It was not possible to produce at full capacity right away, however, due to the need to introduce new equipment and processes in stages. Moderna was still training newly hired workers and encountering problems such as equipment malfunctions and delays in obtaining replacement parts, such as filters.

“Since we started, there hasn’t been a single week where we haven’t had any problems,” said Andres. “When making medications, it is absolutely impossible not to have problems in the beginning. Takes time.”

Now, the company has trained employees and figured out how to tackle challenges like getting raw materials to its plants more quickly, he said. The company also looked for ways to speed up the process, including reducing the time it takes after a batch is finished to inspect and package the bottles.

The company is planning to speed up production by increasing the number of doses in each bottle from 10 to 15, something that needs US regulatory approval, Andres said.

“We are in the zone,” he said. “I like our chances of continuing to deliver.”

New York-based Pfizer more than doubled its weekly dose production of the Covid-19 vaccine in the United States to more than 13 million, from five million in early February, according to a Pfizer spokesman.

Pfizer increased production in part by discovering that it was rapidly consuming the supply of certain circular filters used in the production process and could not obtain more from its supplier quickly enough. Filters remove certain components of the vaccine during production.

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

The company also faced restrictions on obtaining the tiny particles of fat known as lipids from external suppliers, which form the protective layer around the vaccine’s genetic material. Therefore, Pfizer started producing the material at its factories in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Groton, Connecticut, and completed three batches, said Calitri.

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

“We are not finished at all,” he said. “There is no doubt that we will burst 13 million a week and go up much more in the very near future.”

Johnson & Johnson’s initial supply, when the company’s vaccine was authorized at the end of last month, was less than expected by federal authorities, but analysts expect more stable production to begin in weeks, which will increase supply general dose.

J&J is increasing domestic production and working with other companies, including Merck, to expand further. A spokesman for J&J said the company was on track to deliver a total of 20 million doses for use in the United States by the end of March.

—Jared S. Hopkins contributed to this article

Write to Peter Loftus at [email protected]