Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine rolls off production line amid hopes for emergency approval

Ns News Online Desk: Pfizer has released footage of a potential coronavirus vaccine rolling off the production line — as the drug giant aims to have 100 million doses ready by the end of the year. The Manhattan-based company told the Mail on Sunday that it has already made “several hundred thousand doses” of the drug as it prepares to seek emergency use in the US by November.

The firm’s UK boss, Ben Osborn, also told the paper that scientists in its main British lab have also unearthed drugs that could provide a potential complete cure for Covid-19, as opposed to merely a preventative vaccine.

Osborn said the company is manufacturing the huge stockpile of its current vaccine candidate in Belgium “at risk and at scale,” calling it “tremendously exciting.”

“The hope here is that we essentially come up with a medicine that disrupts the virus and ultimately prevents it worsening the condition of a patient,” he told the Mail’s financial site, This is Money.“It was great to see the first vial coming off the manufacturing line. It just brought a tremendous smile to my face to see all of this work actually result in a product,” he said. But “we can only go as fast as the science allows us to,” he stressed.

Pfizer expects to know whether or not the vaccine works by the end of this month, but the company still has to prove the shot is safe and can be manufactured properly to seek a so-called emergency use authorization, CEO Albert Bourla said Friday. If safe, he expects his company to seek emergency use in the US in the third week of November.