SA to start making Pfizer vaccine

– Pharmaceutical companies BioNTech and Pfizer yesterday said they had found a South African partner to produce their Covid vaccine locally, the first such deal in Africa.

The move comes amid growing criticism of vaccine inequality that has seen poor countries fall behind richer ones in the race to protect people from the coronavirus.

Under the agreement, Cape Town-based Biovac will complete the last step in the manufacturing process of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, known as “fill and finish”, the companies said in a statement.

The project will take time to get off the ground, however, with the first African-finished vaccines not expected before next year.

Once up and running, Biovac is set to churn out more than 100 million doses annually that will be distributed to the 55 countries in the African Union.

“This is a critical step forward in strengthening sustainable access to a vaccine in the fight against this tragic, worldwide pandemic,” said Biovac chief executive Morena Makhoana.

The “technical transfer, onsite development and equipment installation activities will begin immediately”, it added.

The coronavirus vaccine developed by BioNTech and its US partner Pfizer, based on mRNA technology, was the first to be approved in the West late last year.

Studies have shown it is highly effective against Covid, including against newer and more contagious variants.

With the vaccine roll-outs well underway in the West and supply even outstripping demand in some countries, calls have grown for pharma companies to waive patents on their life-saving jabs.

This has been fiercely opposed by the companies themselves and countries like Germany, whose Chancellor Angela Merkel says suspending intellectual property rights could stifle innovation and would not resolve the lack of manufacturing capacity in the short term.

She has, instead, argued for licensing agreements and partnerships between vaccine makers and local firms, an approach taken by BioNTech, a German company.

“We aim to enable people on all continents to manufacture and distribute our vaccine while ensuring the quality of the manufacturing process and the doses,” said Ugur Sahin, BioNTech’s cofounder and chief executive.

Pfizer-BioNTech said they had so far shipped more than one billion Covid vaccine doses to more than 100 countries or territories, including through the global Covax vaccine-sharing programme.

Covax, backed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and heavily relied upon by African countries, has delivered fewer doses than expected. WHO estimated this month that only two percent of the African population of around 16 million people were fully vaccinated.

SA has the highest number of Covid cases and deaths in Africa, recording more than 2.3 million infections and over 67 000 deaths.

The country is currently battling a brutal third wave of the pandemic, fuelled by a lack of vaccines, public fatigue with Covid restrictions and the rise of the highly contagious delta variant.

President Cyril Ramaphosa last month announced a plan to turn SA into an mRNA vaccine hub, saying Africans “cannot continue to rely on vaccines that are made outside of Africa because they never come”. –

A critical step in sustainable access to vaccine