US-based pharmaceutical company Pfizer will cut down manufacturing time of its COVID-19 vaccines by half – from 110 days to an average of 60 days – as the production process sees enhancements.
“We call this ‘Project Light Speed,’ and it’s called that for a reason,” Chaz Calitri, Pfizer’s vice president for operations for sterile injectable, told USA TODAY.
According to Calitri, producing the COVID-19 vaccine bypassed the standard time a vaccine would be developed. “We just went right to commercial production,” he said.
Calitri noted that as soon as vaccines came off the production line, engineers started working on how to expedite production with “slick enhancements”.
Aside from improving the speed at which the vaccines are produced, Calitri revealed that Pfizer is increasing output by adding manufacturing lines at the Company’s three plants.
While the Company is taking shortcuts to meet global vaccine demands, Pfizer said that FDA regulation and best manufacturing practices are still being met.
“There are going to be profound shifts in the way we do business.”
“We just demonstrated to ourselves that we can go from a phone call in March to having now delivered 50 to 60 million doses.”
Earlier today, the European Union’s ambassador to Australia Michael Pulch promised that the export of 20 million Pfizer vaccine doses bound for Australia will arrive on time.
The Pfizer vaccine is one of four vaccine agreements the Australian Government has entered into, the others being University of Oxford/AstraZeneca, Novavax and
COVAX Facility candidates.
