Brazilian pharma firm to produce Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for distribution in Latin America

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The consortium of the U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the German laboratory BioNTech announced Thursday (26) an agreement with the Brazilian multinational Eurofarma for the local production of its Covid-19 immunizer and its distribution in Latin America.

“Eurofarma will carry out manufacturing activities within the global Covid-19 vaccine supply chain and production network that Pfizer and BioNTech have, which now extends to 4 continents and will include 20 manufacturing units,” the Brazilian pharmaceutical company said in a statement.

The agreement provides for “technical transfer, local development, and installation of equipment”, actions that “will begin immediately” to start large-scale manufacturing from 2022 with inputs from the United States.

“At full operational capacity, annual production should exceed 100 million doses, and all doses will be distributed exclusively in Latin America,” Eurofarma stressed.

Pfizer’s president, Albert Bourla, quoted in the press release, stressed that “everyone, regardless of financial status, ethnicity, religion or geography, deserves access to life-saving Covid-19 vaccines”.

BioNTech’s president and co-founder, Ugur Sahin, highlighted the “continued increase in manufacturing capacity,” which has enabled the delivery of 1.3 billion doses, with a target of 3 billion by the end of this year,” and today’s “partnership is an important step in expanding access to vaccines in Latin America.”

For Maurizio Billi, president of Eurofarma, the agreement “represented a milestone” in the 50-year history of the Brazilian company and highlighted the “industrial, technological and quality control capacity” offered to “contribute to the supply of the Latin American market”.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is used in 120 countries. In Brazil, it was the first to obtain the definitive registration by the National Health Regulatory Agency (ANVISA), a status granted in February and which only this month was obtained in its own country of origin, the United States.

THIRD DOSE

The agreement was announced a day after the Brazilian Ministry of Health announced that from September 15, it would begin to apply a third booster dose for people over 70 years of age who completed their immunization cycle more than 6 months ago and people with low immunity, such as transplant recipients.

This third dose, according to the ministerial portfolio, will be carried out “preferably with Pfizer-BioNTech” or, failing that, with that of the Anglo-Swedish laboratory AstraZeneca and the British University of Oxford, produced in Brazil by the state-owned Fiocruz, and the Belgian Janssen, of the U.S. multinational Johnson & Johnson.

ANVISA, on the other hand, asked Fiocruz for more detailed studies on the need for the third booster dose for the rest of the population.

At present, 184.5 million doses have been administered in Brazil, with 57.8 million vaccines in second or single doses. Thus, 27.2 % of the nearly 212 million inhabitants have completed the immunization cycle.

AstraZeneca is responsible for 45.6% of the vaccines administered; Coronavac, from the Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac and produced in Brazil by the São Paulo public laboratory Instituto Butatan, accounts for 34.5%; Pfizer-BioNTech for 17.5% and Janssen for 2.5%.

EUROFARMA GROUP

São Paulo-based Eurofarma Group is a health care company focused on medical prescription, over-the-counter, generic, hospital, oncology, and veterinary sectors. In Brazil alone, it offers 433 products, more than 1 thousand presentations, serves 30 medical specialties, and covers 201 therapeutic classes, which represent 66% of the total market.

Founded in 1972 and the first multinational pharmaceutical company with 100% Brazilian capital, it has its own operations in 20 countries, maintaining an important manufacturing park in Brazil and plants in six other Latin American countries. In 2020, it generated net sales of R$5.7 (US$1.1) billion and employed over 7,600 employees.