Will Africa finally be able to produce its own vaccines against covid-19? On February 16, the German laboratory BioNTech, which co-developed the first messenger RNA vaccine with Pfizer, presented its plan to deploy mobile production units on the continent on the occasion of the inauguration of its new factory in Marburg. In the presence of three African Heads of State: the Senegalese Macky Sall, the Ghanaian Nana Akufo-Addo and the Rwandan Paul Kagame.
More than a year after the administration of the first doses and two years after the start of the pandemic, Africa is the continent least vaccinated against Covid-19. “Only 10% of Africans are vaccinated, even 5 or 6% in low-income countries, while more than 60% of the populations of developed countries are. This situation is not fair,” complains WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in an interview to be published shortly in Young Africa. “Today, explains the Nigerian, 80% of the world’s vaccines are exported by ten countries. We need to decentralize this production,” she explains.
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Covid: the continent’s first messenger RNA vaccine will be South African
It is therefore to respond to this situation, which has been at the heart of the debate for several months, that the German pharmaceutical giant has designed a mobile factory called “BioNTainer”, which will offer an initial capacity of up to 50 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine. -19 per year.
BioNtainer will offer an initial capacity of 50 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine per year
The first models are expected in Rwanda and Senegal in the second quarter of 2022 and the first doses should be available twelve months later. South Africa should then “potentially” join the production network. Note that the construction of a conventional plant can take three years.
Training of local specialists
The factory in kit form BioNTech is able to support the entire manufacturing process. It consists of two modules made with twelve containers in total, one for the manufacture of mRNA and the other for the finalization of the vaccine serum, which must then be bottled elsewhere. Together, the two modules will require 800 m² of space.
While the manufacture of the vaccine requires some 50,000 steps to be carefully observed, “the idea is to standardize the container, to validate the process in advance” before installing it, detailed Mr. Sahin to AFP. BioNTech employees will work there before training local specialists in a logic of skills transfer in the “medium or long term”, according to a press release from the German group.
BioNTech’s “container laboratories” plan is part of the company’s development strategy, which intends to establish itself on all continents. “Increasing local production is essential”, while more than a hundred countries “may not reach the target of vaccination coverage of 70% of the population that we have set for the middle of this year”, warned the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also present at Marburg.