As the world waits for deliveries of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, the pharmaceutical company is having to adjust their target after hitting supply chain obstacles, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Scaling up the raw material supply chain took longer than expected,” a company spokeswoman told the WSJ.
Pfizer and partner BioNTech SE had hoped to ship out 100 million doses of their vaccine by the end of the year, that has nowreportedly been cut to estimates of about 50 million.
Two doses are needed for each person to be vaccinated.
Pfizer did not elaborate on where the raw material shortfalls happened. They did saysome raw materials in early production earlier this year did not meet their standards and they had to fix the issue.
After the WSJ’s report, Pfizer’s stockprice dropped and the S&P 500 fell slightly.
The United Kingdom has granted emergency use of the Pfizer vaccine, and is expected to start administering doses soon. The FDA in the U.S. is considering a similar authorization, which could come later in December.
As part of Operation Warp Speed, the U.S. Government has purchased 100 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine, with an option to buy more.
Roughly 20 million of those doses were expected by the end of the year once the FDA granted emergency use authorization. No word on how Pfizer’s shipping delays could impact this number.
Pfizer says their production lines in the U.S. and Europe are complete and they are “confident” they will supply the targeted number of doses in early 2021.