With a spotlight on COVID-19 vaccine distribution shortcomings, there’s another bottleneck that could prevent inoculations from significantly speeding up in the near future: Pfizer’s and Moderna’s ability to scale up manufacturing and deliver doses to the U.S. government.
The companies promised to deliver 100 million doses apiece to the United States by the end of March. But they’ll need to make huge leaps in a short time to meet that goal.
John McShane, a managing partner at the health care product consulting firm Validant, said he’s “guardedly optimistic” that the companies will be able to scale up manufacturing drastically and deliver 100 million doses each by March 31.
He said there are three main “levers” the companies can pull to increase production: add equipment, increase the yield per batch and find ways to shorten the time it takes to go from raw materials to finished, internally approved product.
