Developing a COVID-19 vaccine in record time will be tough. Producing enough to end the pandemic will be the biggest medical manufacturing feat in history.
Companies and governments are racing to scale-up machinery to address a critical shortage in automated filling and finishing capacity - the final step in the manufacturing process of putting the vaccine into vials or syringes, sealing them and packaging them up for shipping. "It's likely to be a tailored approach to start with," he said in an interview."We're looking to have something like one to two billion doses of vaccine in the first year, spread out over the world population."
Funded by the government in 2012, the plant includes single-use disposable bioreactor equipment featuring plastic bags rather than stainless steel fermentation equipment, which makes it easier to switch from one vaccine to another. "The downside is that after a healthcare practitioner opens a vial, they need to then vaccinate 20 people in a short, 24-hour time," said Prashant Yadav, a global healthcare supply-chain expert at the Center for Global Development in Washington.
The company expects to boost production from the current 5-10 million vials a year to 120 million within three-and-a-half months, he told Reuters. In some places, it is common to lose 25per cent or more of vaccines because of broken cold chains, he told Reuters.