As pressure to share technology mounts, BioNTech selects Rwanda for latest vaccine site

26 Oct 2021
endpts.com
VaccinemRNA
BioNTech’s first mRNA-based vaccine site in Africa will call Rwanda home, and construction is set to start in mid-2022, the company announced Tuesday at a public health forum. The German company signed a memorandum of understanding, after a meeting between Rwanda’s Minister of Health, Daniel Ngamije, Senegal’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Aïssata Tall Sall, and senior BioNTech officials. Construction plans have been finalized, and assets have been ordered. The agreement will help bring end-to-end manufacturing to Africa, and as many as several hundred million doses of vaccines per year, though initial production will be more modest. The move comes as pressure mounts on Moderna and BioNTech (and its partner Pfizer) to make their Covid-19 vaccineCovid-19 vaccine more accessible to the vast swaths of the globe still desperate for doses. That’s included calls for the companies to share their intellectual property, which the drugmakers view as anathema. Both have now announced plans to open plants in Africa, although each of the proposals has faced criticism that they won’t help slow this pandemic. And although BioNTech unveiled its plans in coordination with the WHO and local governments, Moderna faced criticism that its plan wasn’t sufficiently thought out: When it made its announcement, the company hadn’t decided which of the continent’s 55 countries to place their site in. Both moves also come as the companies ignore an mRNA technology hub set up by the WHO, prompting the organization to try and reverse engineer Moderna’s vaccine. Also on Tuesday, in what could perhaps one of the most anticipated announcements Moderna has made in recent months, the Cambridge, MA biotech will supply up to 110 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine to the African Union, the company announced Tuesday. CEO Stephane Bancel said it is just the first step. “We recognize that access to COVID-19 vaccines continues to be a challenge in many parts of the world and we remain committed to helping to protect as many people as possible around the globe,” he said in a statement. The first 15 million doses will come in Q4 of 2021, with another 35 million in Q1 of 2022 and up to 60 million in Q2 2022. As of mid-October, just nine African countries had met the goal of vaccinating 10% of their populations by the end of September, according to the World Health Organization. The continent has largely been left behind amid vaccination efforts, with roughly 4% of its total population vaccinated. Even as the US pumped $200 million into a Gqeberha, South Africa plant owned by Aspen Pharmaceutical to increase the supply of J&J shots, those doses were initially shipped back overseas to Europe. “Bringing end-to-end vaccine manufacturing of biologicals to Africa is essential for our continent’s health security and prosperity,” Ngamije said in a press release. “Rwanda is committed to working with the African Union, the European Union, BioNTech, and other technology partners to make this a reality as quickly as possible.” BioNTech will staff, own and operate the site at first, to help safely ramp up production. Then, it will transfer knowledge to local partners. The Rwanda Development Board and Institut Pasteur de Dakar in Senegal have both agreed to quickly build up its human resources operations to take over ownership. BioNTech is using its facility in Marburg, Germany site as an example for the Rwandan site. Capacity will start at 50 million doses a year, then increase sequentially by adding manufacturing lines and sites as the project progresses. “We aim to accelerate the building of a GMP-certified manufacturing facility and plan to begin the construction on site in mid-2022. The MoU underlines that time is a critical success factor in the development of sustainable vaccine production for the African Union,” COO Sierk Poetting said in a press release. “We have finalized the planning and initial assets for the new facility have already been ordered.” BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin had met with Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, as well as Senegalese President Macky Sall and EC President Ursula von der Leyen in August to discuss a possible site for its new manufacturing operations. The company was among the first to publicly announce stage two of its manufacturing plan, once the need for Covid-19 vaccineCovid-19 vaccine and treatment manufacturing dies down. BioNTech will spin its production into malaria and tuberculosis vaccines when the time is right. But before then, it will up its capacity across the board, as the vaccine is already being manufactured on three continents and in 20 sites. It’s all part of the plan to have a 4 billion dose capacity in 2022.
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