How can more covid-19 vaccines be made available?
The nuts and bolts of scaling up production matter more than intellectual property
BIOMEDICINE HAS never seen anything like it. This time last year, no company had ever made a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid 19, on an industrial scale. By the middle of this April a billion doses had been delivered. According to Airfinity, a data provider, a second billion doses are expected by June 1st. On current estimates the world’s pharmaceutical companies look set to provide 10.9bn doses over the course of 2021.
So far this effort has increased the world’s capacity for producing vaccines of all sorts by a factor of three to four. “It’s insane,” says Tim Gardner, the boss of Riffyn, a biotechnology startup focused on speeding up drug-production processes. “It’s an incredible success.”
This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline "The insufficient miracle"
From the May 15th 2021 edition
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