Pfizer-BioNTech is Shipping Entire Vaccine Labs to Africa to Fight COVID-19
Much has been made of the need to supply less developed parts of the world with COVID-19 vaccines with many experts agreeing that until Africa is vaccinated, the crisis will never be truly over.
To meet this demand, the German firm responsible for the first approved COVID vaccine has revealed plans to ship miniature vaccine labs to these regions. The labs are installed inside shipping containers which means they can easily be loaded onto cargo ships and dispatched to where they are most sorely needed.
BioNTech will provide, at no cost, the containers, materials, and expertise to get the labs up and running and estimates that just two of these containers could produce up to 50 million vaccine doses per year. In return the host country would provide the land and, ensure that local infrastructure such as water and electricity is sufficient and dependable, and find people to work in the labs.
The vaccines produced would be for use in the country where it was made or exported to other members of the African Union at a not-for-profit price.
"It's not cheap, we're talking millions" says BioNTech's Chief Operating Officer, Sierk Poetting. "We're financing this at our own risk. We've developed this at our own risk. It's our goal to bring this to Africa."