Brazil based Eurofarma Labs to manufacture Pfizer vaccine for Latin America

Pfizer and BioNTech have signed on to join Brazil's Eurofarma Laboratories as manufacturers of their COVID-19 vaccine doses for Latin America, in a bid to strengthen the two drug companies as suppliers to low- and middle-income countries.

Eurofarma will start manufacturing ready-made doses starting in 2022, the first stage of expansion in Latin America for the supply network of the two major vaccine partners. The agreement does not cover the complicated process of mRNA production that is done in Pfizer US facilities.

Eurofarma is expected to produce more than 100 million doses every year with full operational capacity, Pfizer and BioNTech said in a joint statement on Thursday.

The statement also said they have so far shipped 1.3 billion doses of their two-shot vaccine worldwide and aim to deliver 3 billion by the end of this year.

Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said the deal "we are expanding our global supply chain network to another region — this is helping us continue to provide countries a fair and equitable access to our COVID-19 vaccine."

The planned expansion comes after US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron supported a waiver of vaccine patents earlier this year, protected by the World Trade Organization's agreement on intellectual property to strengthen supplies for poorer nations.

Countries including Germany, where BioNTech is based, and BioNTech themselves have argued that only vaccine inventors and their chosen partners can quickly build global production lines because much more know-how is required for the task than what is encoded in patents.

Pfizer and BioNTech last also signed a deal for the South African Biovac Institute to process and disseminate over 100 million doses a year to Africa.