Norway’s Pfizer vaccines not as delayed as feared

Pfizer will deliver future vaccine doses to Norway more quickly after the delays earlier this month. The company has promised to make up for the backlog in February.

The Pfizer plant’s upgrade in Belgium led to the pharmaceutical giant announcing in mid-January that deliveries of corona vaccines to all European countries would be delayed.

The Norwegian authorities were informed that delivery would be reduced by around 20-25% for several weeks. But already next week, Norway will receive the same number of vaccine doses as agreed, because then the factory will be up and running as normal again, TV 2 writes.

Pfizer, which has developed the vaccine in collaboration with BioNTech, is reorganizing production in order to increase capacity in the long term.

Thus, the company can deliver more doses faster than previously planned.

No talk of numbers

Communications Manager Joachim Henriksen at Pfizer Norway stated that enough doses would be delivered during February to make up for the delay and that Norway would receive more doses earlier than the original plan.

“But I can’t give any specific figures,” he told news bureau NTB.

Through the procurement agreement between Pfizer and the EU, Norway has an opportunity to purchase a total of 7.2 million vaccines.

Charging more per vial

On Tuesday, it became known that Pfizer is raising the price per vaccine vial, which has led the Swedish authorities to pause payments. 

The reason is that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has concluded that six doses can be taken from each vial, and not just five as previously thought. In the agreement between Pfizer and the EU, the price is set per dose.

“It’s just an invoice question. The price per dose is exactly the same as before,” Henriksen said.

Minister of Health Bent Høie (H) said on Tuesday that he has no problem paying more if Norway actually gets more.

How much Norway and the EU pay for the vaccines from Pfizer and BioNTech is not publicly known. 

But according to the news agency Reuters, the EU pays EUR 15 (NOK 157) per dose. Before Christmas, Belgium’s Budget Minister Eva De Bleeker tweeted a price list that showed EUR 12 (NOK 125) per dose. 

The tweet was quickly deleted, as the information is intended to be confidential.

Troubles for AstraZeneca

The drug manufacturer AstraZeneca has also announced significant delays in the deliveries of their corona vaccines.

Norway will receive around 1 million fewer doses than expected in February.

The company said that the delay was caused by problems with upscaling production facilities in Europe, but the EU has questioned the explanation.

The delays from the producers have consequences for the vaccination programs in Norway and other countries and create new uncertainty about when society can start functioning as normal again.

Source: #Norway Today, #NorwayTodayNews

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