COVID-19: WILL THERE BE ENOUGH VIALS TO HOLD THE BILLIONS OF VACCINE DOSES?
Source: BFM Business - J. B. with AFP - 13/11/2020
Pharmaceutical glass producers are stepping up the pace to meet demand that promises to grow exponentially in the coming months.
In the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, the first results for potential vaccines are starting to be published. And in this race against time, alongside the laboratories, other manufacturers are gearing up to meet exponential demand. Pharmaceutical glass producers are among them.
"These are unprecedented times"
The figures are staggering: billions of vaccine doses are expected to vaccinate populations. For the vaccine candidate developed by US-based Pfizer and German company BioNTech alone – which announced earlier this week that it had reached 90% efficacy, according to preliminary results – 1.3 billion doses are expected to be produced next year. But once the precious vaccine has been found, it still needs a container. Like the laboratories, pharmaceutical packaging producers have also had to step up the pace.
"These are unprecedented times," Andrea Zambon, business development director at Italian group Stevanato, one of the leading producers of pharmaceutical vials, told AFP in an email. Because of the pandemic, his company expects global demand to increase by two billion units by the end of 2021. "This increase is mainly linked to vials (single-dose and multi-dose, accounting for 90% of demand). More recently, we have also seen growing demand for prefilled syringes," Stevanato explains.
Annick Somers, of Japanese group Nipro Group, confirms: "demand for vials has increased considerably. We are doing everything possible to accelerate our investment plans".
12 to 15 billion doses
The vials in demand are mainly produced using tubular glass technology. They are borosilicate glass vials – ranging from 2 to 10 ml – a proven solution for preserving vaccine stability, according to manufacturers. And they may sometimes contain several doses, points out German giant Schott, which says it will deliver enough containers for 2 billion vaccine doses.
This is one way of addressing a major logistical challenge. For how can the entire world population be given access to the vaccine? If vaccination requires several doses per person, "there may not be enough glass vials available for a global campaign (...) aiming to distribute 12 to 15 billion doses", warns Thomas Cueni, Director General of IFPMA, the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations, contacted by AFP.
Under these conditions, he argues, the use of multi-dose vials, with up to 20 doses per vial, will help "ease the pressure" on manufacturers. Fears of insufficient supply are shared by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which says it "quickly identified a global shortage of the pharmaceutical glass vials (specifically tubular glass) required".
Contacted by AFP, the laboratories involved in the vaccine race nevertheless sought to reassure, whether US companies Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer or France's Sanofi. The same message came from US biotech Moderna, which says it has "secured sufficient raw materials and components in advance" to supply 1 billion doses in 2021.
"Vaccine pouches"
In any case, vaccine players did not wait for clinical trial results before going shopping. CEPI, for instance, has already ordered 100 million multi-dose vials from Stevanato.
Stevanato plans to increase its production capacity by 15 to 20% over three years and has already hired 300 additional people, in a group of some 4,000 employees. Schott, for its part, says it has already signed agreements with major laboratories and delivered millions of vials for various programmes, including "Warp Speed", the US operation coordinating vaccine development.