WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th September, 2021) Vaccine production facilities should be kept in a ready state in case of a future possible pandemic and need for immediate capacity for vaccination output, BioNTech Chief Financial Officer Sierk Poetting said on Tuesday speaking at the public forum hosted by the World Trade Organization.
"I think the world learned this time. I think we have to be prepared for next time that you have a broad production that probably potentially even kept warm for the pandemic case. You never need several billion doses of other vaccines but in the pandemic, you need a capacity, you need to keep this warm. That is why (we should have) a global network of vaccine facilities that have to be kept warm," he said.
Speaking on the vaccine distribution during this current COVID-19 pandemic, Poetting said that the Pfizer-BioNTech alliance should ensure that the dedicated regions have everything in place to manufacture their own vaccines.
"We do feel the duty to produce as much as possible (vaccines) right now. At BioNTech we also feel the duty to bring local manufacturing to, for example, Africa," he said.
He said that it is important to set a transfer at a local level that works.
He added that Pfizer and BioNTech alliances from the start were trying to get more partners in the sphere of vaccine-making and they are "still increasing these partnerships right now."
As of September 2021, Pfizer-BioNTech shipped some 1.5 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses worldwide, according to the firms' own statistics.
