Manufacture of Covid-19 vaccine in US races before

Pfizer figured out how to spread the rare reserves of special filters needed for the vaccine production process by recycling them. Moderna has shortened the time required to inspect and package newly made vaccine vials.

Companies – along with Johnson & Johnson,

which recently launched a vaccine Covid-19 – also joins other companies to further increase production.

In addition, the US government has helped vaccine manufacturers access supplies under the Defense Production Act, say suppliers and government officials. The Biden administration this month said it used the act to provide $ 105 million in funding to help Merck & Co. to make doses of J&J’s Covid-19 vaccine and to accelerate the materials used in its production.

Improvements and the addition of J & J’s photo promise to boost supply in the US, as health authorities accelerate efforts to inoculate enough people to lift restrictions and reopen schools, businesses and other units.

US monthly production for the three licensed vaccines is expected to reach 132 million doses in March, nearly tripling the 48 million in February, according to estimates by Evercore ISI analysts.

“We really should expect about a substantial increase in supply over the next month,” said Eric Toner, a senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Early material supply blocks have been “remedied.”

The global supply of Covid-19 vaccines is also increasing, although access to supplies and the pace of vaccinations vary widely by country. Companies, including AstraZeneca PLC and the Serum Institute of India, expect to produce billions of doses of Covid-19 vaccines by the end of this year.

Vaccines are crucial, say health professionals, in protecting people from severe cases of Covid-19 and overcoming the pandemic and all its restrictions.

In December, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were phased out in the United States. However, initial reserves were limited and the launch started off. States have restricted doses to certain groups, such as the elderly, health care workers, and people with high-risk medical conditions.

However, both production and photo management have increased in recent weeks. Now, about 2.5 million people in the United States are vaccinated daily on average, up from about 500,000 in early January, although many who want a vaccine still can’t get it.

The increased production should be enough to fully vaccinate 76 million people in the US in March, another 75 million in April and then 89 million in May, according to estimates by Evercore ISI analysts. Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines require two doses.

By mid-summer, 75 percent of Americans over the age of 12 should be vaccinated, according to Morgan Stanley. Vaccines are not currently allowed for anyone under the age of 16, but companies could have results this spring for vaccine studies in teens 12 and older, which, if positive, could lead to vaccinations for that group. of age. Companies are also starting testing vaccines in children under 12, but the results of these studies are not expected until the end of this year.

As production increases, President Biden said on March 11 that he wants states to extend the eligibility of all adults by May 1, and said the United States should have enough supply for all adults by the end of May.

Moderna, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, took about three months to make the first 20 million doses of its vaccine last year, but now makes about 40 million a month for the United States, said Juan Andres, chief technical officer and officer for quality, in an interview.

He said the company is likely to reach production of 50 million a month by summer.

Moderna laid much of the groundwork for its production capacity last year by adding new space and equipment to its plant in Norwood, Mass. And another plant in Portsmouth, NH, operated by its contractual production partner Lonza Ltd.

However, it failed to produce at full capacity right from the gate, due to the need to introduce new equipment and processes in stages. Modern still trained newly hired workers and encountered problems such as equipment failures and shutdowns to obtain spare parts such as filters.

“There hasn’t been a single week since I started that I didn’t have any problems,” Mr Andres said. “When making medicines, it is absolutely impossible not to have problems at first. It lasts. “

Now, the company has trained employees and figured out how to cope with challenges, such as faster transportation of raw materials to its factories, he said. The company was also looking for ways to speed up the process, including shortening the time required after completing a batch to inspect and pack the bottles.

It plans to accelerate production by increasing the number of doses in each vial to 15 out of 10, which requires US regulation approval, Andres said.

“We’re in the area,” he said. “I like our chances of continuing to deliver.”

New York-based Pfizer doubled its weekly U.S. production of Covid-19 vaccine doses to more than 13 million from five million in early February, according to a Pfizer spokeswoman.

Pfizer partially increased production, finding that it quickly went through the delivery of certain circular filters used in the production process and could not get more from its supplier as quickly as it needed. Filters remove certain components from the vaccine during production.

The company has begun recycling filters so that they can be reused every two or three times, said Chaz Calitri, Pfizer’s vice president of sterile injection operations for the United States and Europe.

The company is also facing constraints on obtaining tiny fat particles known as lipids from external suppliers as the protective coating around the genetic material in the vaccine. Thus, Pfizer began producing the material at its plants in Kalamazoo, Michigan and Groton, Conn., And completed three batches, Mr. Calitri said.

And the company has added several high-speed bottle filling lines to its Kalamazoo plant and will expand the bottle filling to another factory in McPherson, Kan. The lines can fill up to 575 bottles per minute, Mr. Calitri said.

“I didn’t finish in any way,” he said. “No doubt we will exceed 13 million a week and go much higher in the very near future.”

Johnson & Johnson’s initial supply, when the company’s vaccine was released late last month, was lower than federal officials expected, but analysts expect more steady production to begin in a few weeks, which will add to the total supply of doses.

J&J is increasing domestic production and working with other companies, including Merck, to expand further. A J&J spokesman said the company is about to deliver a total of 20 million doses for use in the United States by the end of March.

—Jared S. Hopkins contributed to this article

Write to Peter Loftus at [email protected]