Pfizer to supply U.S. with 100M more vaccine doses
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration and Pfizer on Wednesday said they had reached an agreement supplying the United States with an additional 100 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine made by the pharmaceutical giant and the German company BioNTech by the end of July.
The deal doubles the total number of doses the government has on order from Pfizer — enough to immunize 100 million people with a two-dose regimen. The government will pay $1.95 billion for the additional doses and has agreed to help Pfizer obtain the ingredients needed to make the vaccine, part of an effort to boost manufacturing of a product that embodies hope for reviving the economy and ending the pandemic.
The additional doses are unlikely to mean an expansion of early access to the shots, which are being rationed for health care workers and long-term care residents and staff, as the coronavirus strains the country’s medical system. But the added supply averts the possibility of a devastating shortfall in the spring and summer, right as the government was anticipating making immunization available to wider segments of the public.
Though it does not accelerate when most Americans will be able to receive shots, Wednesday’s announcement increases by one-third the amount of vaccine available by mid2021. Pfizer and the biotechnology company Moderna, which have received federal authorization to distribute coronavirus vaccines on an emergency basis, have now promised, between them, to provide the government with 400 million doses. The shots will be free to anyone who receives them.
“With these 100 million additional doses, the United States will be able to protect more individuals and hopefully end this devastating pandemic more quickly,” Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chief executive, said Wednesday.
More than 1 million vaccine doses had been administered in the United States by Wednesday, according to data maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 10 million doses had been distributed, mainly to large hospital systems equipped to rapidly inoculate large numbers of ICU nurses, respiratory therapists, service workers and others battling an intensifying surge of COVID-19 infections.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the virus has infected 18.3 million people in the United States and killed nearly 324,000.
In the United States, the first vaccines are being given as the country faces a rapid surge in infections and deaths and some hospitals are exceeding their capacities. Over the past week, an average of 2,666 Americans died each day of coronavirus — a record. Nearly 118,000 patients were hospitalized with COVID-19, in another alltime high for the country.
Between the products from Pfizer and Moderna, federal officials say they anticipate being able to deliver at least a first shot of the two-dose regimens to 100 million Americans by the end of February. Pfizer and Moderna have both promised half of their doses will be available to the government for distribution by April 1.
The leaders of Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s initiative to speed the development of vaccines and therapeutics, have stressed that other promising vaccine candidates will soon supplement this supply. Some of those additional candidates, which include single-dose regimens easier to store and administer, are in latestage clinical trials, while others have yet to begin them.