The CEO of the German company BioNtech, Uğur Şahin said that the biggest challenge facing his organisation and its partner, Pfizer, after licensing the Coronavirus vaccine in America, will be to increase manufacturing.
Şahin said, "It is very clear that there is an urgent need for more doses, and we are trying our best to address this issue and produce more doses," according to Reuters.
Şahin confirmed that the two companies will produce up to 1.3 billion doses of the vaccine next year.
The US Food and Drug Administration authorized the emergency use of the vaccine on Friday, after Britain became the first country to start using the vaccine outside of clinical trials last week.
The CEO of BioNtech stated that "I expect that the two companies will receive conditional approval from the European Medicines Agency by the end of the month to start distributing the vaccine in European countries early next year.
The CEO hopes to increase supply after the acquisition of the Biontech factory, which was purchased from Novartis in Marburg, Germany. The company has a capacity of producing 750 million doses annually.
He also confirmed that they are working to develop and operate the factory according to an expeditious schedule.
He added, "The basic plan aims to produce 1.3 billion doses and we are working on expanding this plan."
"I cannot inform you at the moment of how much we can expand, but we will try to do it in a big way."
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