EU didn't order enough vaccine, say German scientists behind Pfizer/BioNTech jab

The German couple behind the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine have criticised the European Union for failing to order enough doses.

“The process in Europe was not as quick and straightforward as it was in other countries,” Prof Ugur Sahin, the billionaire scientist and CEO of BioNTech, told Spiegel magazine.

“There was an assumption that many other companies would come with vaccines. Obviously the thinking which prevailed was: we'll get enough, it won't be so bad, and we have it under control. I was amazed.”

Pfizer-BioNTech’s is the only vaccine to win EU approval so far, but the bloc had only ordered 200m doses until last week, when it ordered a further 100m.

That is still not enough to provide the EU’s population of 446m with a single shot, let alone the two required for the vaccine to be effective.

By comparison, the UK has ordered 30m doses as well as 100m doses of the Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccine, which is also approved for use in Britain — enough to immunise the entire population.

“It’s also because the EU is not directly authorized, but the member states have a say. In a situation where a quick decision is required, this can cost time,” Prof Sahin said in an extensive interview with Spiegel.

“Several companies had announced that they were developing a vaccine. So the EU and some other countries came up with the idea of putting together a basket of different providers. This approach made perfect sense,” Özlem Türeci, Prof Sahin’s wife and co-founder of BioNTech, added.

“At some point, however, it turned out that many were unable to deliver on time. Then it was too late to order extensively elsewhere.”

Criticised for failing to secure enough doses of a vaccine developed in Germany, Angela Merkel’s government ordered an additional 30m doses — only to come under fire from Italy for breaking an agreement for the EU to buy the vaccine as a bloc.

BioNTech is in urgent talks with suppliers in order to ramp up its production to meet the demand. German politicians have called for the government to order other pharmaceutical companies to produce the vaccine, but Prof Sahin warned there are no quick fixes.

“Manufacturing drug-quality mRNA vaccines is anything but trivial. You can't just switch over and produce the vaccine is instead of aspirin or cough syrup,” he said. “The process requires years of expertise and the right equipment. It took us ten years to build up these skills.”

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