Novartis, Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing deal in works

Global pharmaceutical company Novartis announced Friday it signed an early agreement to boost manufacturing capacity for the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine.

The company intends to take mRNA ingredients from BioNTech, load it into vials at its site in Stein, Switzerland, and ship it back to BioNTech for global distribution, according to a company announcement.

The work will kick off in the second quarter of 2021, pending final agreements.

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“Novartis has been mobilizing on multiple fronts to support the global pandemic response,” said Steffen Lang, head of Novartis technical operations, in the news release posted Friday. “As a company reimagining medicine with advanced therapy platforms, we are committed to leverage our manufacturing capabilities to help support the supply of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics around the world. We expect this to be the first of a number of such agreements.”

Novartis said its manufacturing team is in late talks with numerous companies to help shoulder manufacturing tasks like “mRNA production, therapeutic protein production [and] raw material production” for vaccines and therapeutics against the novel virus, which has claimed nearly 2.2 million lives worldwide to date, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

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The Pfizer-BioNTech two-dose COVID-19 vaccine continues to roll out around the world, and accounts for over 14 million vaccinations in the U.S, while another 11.7 million Aemricans have received a vaccine developed by Moderna, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).