BioNTech CEO says prospective 2021 vaccine output approaching 3 billion doses

[May 04, 2021]  BERLIN (Reuters) - German COVID-19 vaccine maker BioNTech has continued to ramp up production allowing it to manufacture close to 3 billion doses in 2021, up from a previous target of 2.5 billion.

"Our teams did a great job to further increase the manufacturing scale to come up now with numbers reaching 3 billion doses," BioNTech's Chief Executive and co-founder Ugur Sahin said at a webcast event organised by the Financial Times.

"We are happy that we are not facing too many technical problems and keep our delivery schedules," he added.

The Mainz-based biotech company said in March that it and its U.S. partner Pfizer upgraded their supply chain to produce 2.5 billion vaccine doses this year, of which 1.4 billion were already sold.

(Reporting by Ludwig Burger, editing by Louise Heavens)

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