Pfizer to Deliver U.S. Vaccine Doses Faster Than Expected
Source: Bloomberg
Pfizer Inc. will be able to supply the U.S. with 200 million Covid-19 vaccine doses by the end of May, two months sooner than previously expected, according to its top executive.
Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said Tuesday that the drugmaker and its partner, BioNTech SE, will be able to deliver the doses to the U.S. well before an earlier July 31 deadline due to a change in the vaccine’s label that allows health-care providers to extract an additional dose from each vial.
The six-dose-per-vial count became effective on Monday and applies to supply contracts going forward, according to a Pfizer representative.
In the U.S., Pfizer and BioNTech will deliver 120 million doses in the first quarter, 20 million more than initially promised, Bourla said in an interview with Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at the Year Ahead Summit, held virtually this year.
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/pfizer-to-deliver-us-vaccine-doses-faster-than-expected/ar-BB1d6RGg?li=BBnb7Kz
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And it was exasperated by Pfizer early on. If we weren't in a near-unprecedented pandemic, Pfizer would have to recall -
By Olivia Goldhill @OliviaGoldhill
December 16, 2020
Pharmacists and executives at several health care systems said they didn’t feel they could risk using the extra dose, especially as Pfizer’s vaccine requires two doses, 21 days apart, to be effective. “We’re not fully confident of our future supply. Let’s say we use the six but we get fewer doses in the future, we might not have enough for the second dose,” said Findlay. “We need to be very cautious in managing that supply.”
Across the country in Boston, Paul Biddinger, medical director for emergency preparedness at Mass General Brigham, said he’d heard of the extra doses from the British vaccine rollout earlier this month. Despite being prepared, his team still had to throw out the additional doses on the first day of distribution.
In Texas, the extra doses were discarded on the first day of distribution but, by Wednesday morning, Houston Methodist Hospital chief executive Roberta Schwartz said her team heard from Pfizer that it was okay to use what’s in the vial.
Finally, on Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration updated its guidance, saying health care providers should feel free to use all the full doses within each vial. “At this time, given the public health emergency, FDA is advising that it is acceptable to use every full dose obtainable (the sixth, or possibly even a seventh) from each vial, pending resolution of the issue,” spokesperson Abigail Capobianco wrote in an email to STAT. But any spare half doses should not be combined with half doses from other vials to create a whole one, she added.
But Pfizer was less definitive. Each vial contains enough vaccine for at least five doses, spokesperson Sharon Castillo said in an email to STAT, and each dose must contain 0.3ml. “The amount of vaccine remaining in the multidose vial after removal of 5 doses can vary, depending on the type of needles and syringes used,” she wrote. ”At this time, we cannot provide a recommendation on the use of the remaining amount of vaccine from each vial. Vaccinators need to consult their institution’s policies for the use of multidose vials.”
https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/16/labeling-confusion-led-to-wasted-doses-of-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-in-first-days-of-rollout/