Germany’s BioNTech, which together with Pfizer developed the first mRNA vaccine against the coronavirus, unveiled mobile vaccine production units housed in shipping containers on Wednesday, aimed at bringing manufacturing to Africa.
“The question was, can we make the process compact enough to fit in a container?” the CEO and co-founder of BioNTech, Ugur Sahin, told AFP.
The vaccine-maker aims to start establishing the “first manufacturing facility in the African Union” in “mid-2022”, the group said in a statement.
The company said it expected to ship the so-called “BioNTainers” to Rwanda, Senegal, or both countries.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his Senegalese counterpart Macky Sall attended the announcement at BioNTech’s mRNA production site in Marburg, Germany, along with Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo and World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Africa is the least-vaccinated continent on Earth. Over a year after the first…
Source: Guardian Newspaper
