Pfizer and BioNTech signed an agreement on Wednesday for a South African company to manufacture their COVID-19 vaccine. This is the first deal the companies have signed to have the vaccine produced on the African continent, and it’s the first time an African company will produce a messenger RNA-based vaccine.
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The deal is with The Biovac Institute, which will be involved in the “fill and finish” process. This involves putting the vaccine — received from facilities in Europe — into vials and shipping the doses. The companies will then distribute the doses within the African Union.
Why this matters: There have been widespread calls to increase COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing on the African continent. This is due to vaccine dose hoarding by high-income countries, resistance by pharmaceutical companies to share intellectual property, and the breakdown of COVAX’s supply chain that has left many African countries short of doses.
Only about 1.5% of the continent’s population is vaccinated, as deaths from the disease rapidly increase, and countries face oxygen, and intensive care unit bed shortages.
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Manufacturing of doses at the Biovac Institute is expected to start next year, with the capacity to produce over 100 million doses annually. Biovac also signed an agreement in March with ImmunityBio to manufacture a second-generation COVID-19 vaccine locally, but it is still in clinical trials.
mRNA manufacturing: Currently, two COVID-19 vaccines using mRNA technologies have proven safe and highly efficacious. The other is developed by Moderna. Such vaccines are considered potentially easier to scale than other COVID-19 vaccines and could be faster and easier to adapt for variants, said World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Last month, WHO launched the first “technology transfer hub” for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in South Africa, with hopes that companies such as Pfizer would get on board with the efforts.
About the author
Sara Jervingsarajerving
Sara Jerving is a Senior Reporter at Devex, where she covers global health. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, VICE News, and Bloomberg News among others. Sara holds a master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she was a Lorana Sullivan fellow. She was a finalist for One World Media's Digital Media Award in 2021; a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in 2018; and she was part of a VICE News Tonight on HBO team that received an Emmy nomination in 2018. She received the Philip Greer Memorial Award from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2014.
