Photo: Fernando Martínez / Impremedia
Pfizer announced this morning that it will temporarily reduce deliveries in Europe of its Covid vaccine – 19 until the end of February or the beginning of March while it improves its production capacity at the Belgian plant located in Puurs.
The US laboratory confirmed the news after the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI) warned that Pfizer had notified it this morning of that decision. Six European governments have already described the situation as “unacceptable”, highlighted the Spanish press.
In Spain, one of the countries most affected by the pandemic, the Ministry of Health explained that it is in direct contact with the European Commission -which signed the advance purchase contract with Pfizer-BioNTech-, with the rest of the member states and the heads of Pfizer to mitigate the impact of the reduction announced by the company, so that the autonomous communities and cities can “adapt the vaccination strategy according to to this situation. ”
Pfizer is limiting its production in order to make improvements in its industrial center and thus increase industrial capacity up to 2 billion doses per year, above 1, 300 millions today.
“Pfizer is working hard to deliver more doses than were estimated originally this year with a new goal of reaching 2, 000 million doses in 2021. To do this, Pfizer is expanding manufacturing operations to increase availability and dose production, “explained a company spokesperson.
” Although this will affect temporarily shipments from the end of January to the beginning of February, will provide a significant increase in the doses available to patients at the end of February and March ”, assured.
