Pfizer Vaccine Partner Warns Against Winner-Take-All Mentality

(Bloomberg) -- The hunt for a Covid-19 vaccine isn’t a winner-take-all race but rather a challenge that will require more than one company to succeed, BioNTech SE’s Chief Executive Officer Ugur Sahin said.

Right now, producers aren’t competitors but rather are working with a common goal of immunizing as many people as possible next year, Sahin said in a panel hosted by Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper on Monday. BioNTech is developing its shot together with Pfizer Inc.

Sahin predicted successful approval for at least one shot around the beginning of the year and called for a vaccination push in the first six to eight months of 2021 to avoid more lockdowns next winter.

“There’s a much larger demand than one market participant can deliver right now,” he said. “We need to work together.”

Pfizer and BioNTech shares both dropped on Monday -- reversing a surge in response to positive test results last week -- after rival Moderna Inc. said its Covid vaccine was 94.5% effective in a preliminary analysis of a large clinical trial. Moderna also said its candidate has a much longer shelf life at refrigerator temperatures than the Pfizer-BioNTech jab, which would make it easier to store and ship globally.

BioNTech is working on the storage issues, and Sahin said he’s confident that some of the current requirements around cold storage will change in the course of next year.

The successes in the clinic come even as the pandemic looks increasingly bleak in Europe and North America. The U.S. surpassed 11 million coronavirus cases on Sunday, while in Germany, BioNTech’s home market, Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed for a tighter lockdown.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.