Pharma giant Pfizer hopes to get Covid-19 vaccines to the masses faster by cutting the manufacturing time by almost half, the company confirmed Monday.
By ramping up production and being more efficient, the company expects to reduce the time it takes to produce a batch of vaccine from 110 days to around 60.
“Just in the last month, we’ve doubled output,” Chaz Calitri, who runs the company’s main manufacturing plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan, told USA Today.
Pfizer in December became the first pharmaceutical manufacturer to get an emergency authorization for its coronavirus vaccine from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And about a week later, it began shipping out its vaccines.
Unlike other vaccine developers, Pfizer did not take any federal funds for research or development from the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed.
The vaccine rollout quickly developed bottlenecks and soon there were complaints from state governors that they weren’t getting enough doses from the Trump administration.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis even suggested Pfizer was having manufacturing problems, prompting a swift denial from company CEO Albert Bourla.
As of Monday, 59.3 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines had been delivered in the United States and 42.4 million doses had been administered, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine tracker.
