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Bloomberg reports that plans to produce Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine in Cape Town may be scaled back because of waning demand for the shots, according to the head of the company’s SA manufacturing partner.
About 100-million doses a year are slated to be packaged and filled at a plant controlled by the BioVac Institute, partly owned by the SA government, which would become the first southern hemisphere facility to use the messenger RNA technology underlying the Pfizer-BioNTech version. Yet demand for Covid-19 vaccines has fallen globally as countries start to adapt to the pandemic — even in Africa where vaccination rates are lowest. Aspen Pharmacare, the continent’s biggest drugmaker, said this month that it might close a line to make Johnson & Johnson’s dose in SA due to a lack of orders. “As a manufacturer we are concerned about the picture that’s coming through. At the rate things are going it will probably be less than 100-million doses a year,” Biovac CEO Morena Makhoana indicated. Pfizer said the following in response to questions: “It is becoming increasingly recognised that vaccine supply is no longer the primary challenge impacting vaccinating lower and middle income nations. Country readiness is critical in ensuring that a nation is able to effectively receive, transport and administer the vaccine doses as they arrive.”
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Antony Sguazzin at BusinessLive
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