Drug giant Pfizer has manufactured ‘several hundred thousand doses’ of the COVID vaccine at its plant in Puurs, Belgium, media reports said on Sunday.
They are being stockpiled ready to be rolled out worldwide if clinical trials are a success, and regulators deem it safe and effective.
The US giant hopes to make 100 million doses available this year, of which 40 million are destined for the UK – a figure that will be dwarfed by the 1.3 billion jabs the company aims to manufacture in 2021. Every patient who receives the vaccine will need two doses.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Pfizer UK boss Ben Osborn says: ‘It was great to see the first vial coming off the manufacturing line. It just brought a tremendous smile to my face to see all of this work actually result in a product.’
Pfizer, which is working with Germany’s BioNTech, is currently running a trial on 44,000 people, and last week said it plans to apply for emergency US approval of its vaccine in November. That puts Pfizer in pole position in the race to launch a Covid vaccine.