In a statement published on Wednesday, the two companies
said Cape Town-based Biovac will complete the last step in the manufacturing
process, known as “fill and finish”, of the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine.
“To facilitate Biovac’s involvement in the process, technical
transfer, on-site development and equipment installation activities will begin
immediately,” read the statement.
Ingredients to produce the jabs will arrive from plants
based in Europe, while the manufacturing of finished doses will start in 2022,
it added.
The companies expect that at “full operation capacity” the
annual production of Biovac will hit 100 million doses per year – which will be
distributed among the AU member states.
The announcement of the partnership came amid growing calls
to tackle a striking gap in global vaccine distribution. Just 1.5 percent of
people in Africa are fully vaccinated, compared with 43.7 percent in the
European Union and nearly 50 percent in the United States, according to Our
World in Data.
Unequal distribution has been a source of debate for months
at the World Trade Organization as developing countries, headed by India and
South Africa, have been pushing a proposal to temporarily lift intellectual
property (IP) rights on vaccines to boost global manufacturing capacity.
Without IP, among other issues, manufacturing companies
would not risk being sued for producing jabs without a licence from the
vaccine-maker company.
But the proposal, submitted in October and supported by the
majority of the WTO’s members, has been opposed by a handful of wealthy
countries that claim such a waiver would hamper technological innovation.
Last month, the World Health Organization said it was
setting up a hub, or training facility, in South Africa to give companies there
the know-how and licences to produce COVID-19 vaccines.
Biovac was one of the initial participants in the hub. It
has been a partner of Pfizer since 2015 to manufacture and distribute its
Prevenar 13 pneumonia vaccine.
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