While COVID-19 vaccine critics are busy celebrating the fall of Pfizer’s share price and its legal troubles in the USA, the German company BioNTech, the actual legal manufacturer of the so-called ‘Pfizer vaccine’ and the main financial beneficiary of its sales, is continuing its expansion with the full and open support of Germany and the EU. On Monday, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, Rwandan President Paul Kagame and BioNTech co-founders Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci gathered in the Rwandan capital of Kigali to celebrate the inauguration of BioNTech’s new African mRNA vaccine manufacturing site.
The gala event is documented in the Reuters stream here or, in full, in the local RwandaTV stream below.
According to Germany’s dpa wire service, citing official sources, the German Government has contributed €550 million (£479m, $605m) to the project, €500 million coming from the development aid budget. It is not clear how much of this money is going to BioNTech and how much to related local beneficiaries. In any case, after having cleared over €30 billion in profits on sales of its COVID-19 vaccine in 2021 and 2022, BioNTech will surely not need much help.
It should be noted that the German Government already subsidised the expansion of BioNTech’s manufacturing capacity in Europe by way of the €375 million grant it provided to the company in September 2020, before BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate – its only product to date – had even won regulatory approval. Two days later, BioNTech announced that it was purchasing what would become its main European production facility: the Behringwerke in Marburg.
In addition to the €550 million from the German Government, the European Commission has announced that the EU is contributing another €40 million to the project as a “Global Gateway investment”. “Local manufacturing of vaccines with mRNA technology, in Africa, for the African people, will be a game changer in the fight against diseases and pandemics,” Commission President von der Leyen is quoted as saying in the announcement. “The EU is proud to work with Rwanda and BioNTech to develop a vibrant biopharmaceutical industry on the continent.”
In his speech at the Kigali event, Rwandan President Kagame thanked von der Leyen for her “instrumental” role “in initiating the collaboration with BioNTech”.
Referring to BioNTech’s ‘BioNTainer’ production units in her own speech, President von der Leyen remarked: “It is amazing to think that in just two years, these BioNTainers will be producing up to 50 million of [sic.] doses of vaccines per year.”
But there is the rub. Fifty million doses of what vaccines? As just noted, the COVID-19 vaccine is BioNTech’s only product, and the COVID-19 pandemic is officially over. Alluding to the prior speech by BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin, von der Leyen continued:
And we are not only speaking about battling the coronavirus. But it is about breaking new ground in the fight against, as you have said, Uğur, tuberculosis, malaria and potentially even cancer.
But there are not any authorised mRNA vaccines or drugs for the latter diseases, and millions of doses are not needed for clinical trials. How, then, will these production units be producing 50 million vaccine doses within two years?
Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on X.
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Excellent article and thanks for sharing. The UK’s abysmal performance in handling this virus has been observed world wide. I’m hoping this leads to a complete overhaul of the entire system, but I’m not holding my breath.
There will just be another Quango created to oversee every other Quango involved; staffed of course by the usual suspects referred to above.
Steady on…..Give credit where credit is due… PHE did tell us how many brussells sprouts we should eat per week …..
Bloody vital that. (And works out about £200k per sprout):-))
PHE are responsible also for the refusal to consider the role of Vitamon D3 in the immune response. They have a stated level of D3 in the blood which is disputed by many immunologists who think it should be multiplied by a factor of 10. The refuse to reconsider, and on the NHS website D3s role in immunity isn’t even stated, their recommended dose is ‘for bone health’. A gang of overpaid slow thinking chatterati bathered together on overgenerous expenses and unwilling to admit anything. They are killing people who clearly lack D3 in sufficient qualtity, whether through age, ethnicity or lifestyle. D3 supplement is avalable and relatively cheap, simply handing it out to all patients would in a matter of weeks show what a difference it could make.