New Data: COVID-19 vaccine global production capacity projected to exceed 20 billion doses this year

Biopharmaceutical companies are working across the industry and around the world to meet the global demand for COVID-19 vaccines. Companies have continued to ramp up their efforts to source needed supplies, identify manufacturing efficiencies and increase manufacturing capacity through partnerships in the United States and around the globe to get as many COVID-19 vaccine shots in arms as possible.

Today, almost 12.0 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses have been produced and delivered, and nearly 5 billion people worldwide have received at least one dose.

Airfinity forecasts the capacity to produce more than 20 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses in 2022, which is far more than needed to both achieve the World Health Organization’s call for countries to vaccinate 70% of their population by the end of the year and provide boosters. To reach this point, biopharmaceutical manufacturers have entered into hundreds of voluntary partnerships globally to increase production as quickly as possible. Many challenges remain to ensure vaccines reach all countries and to ensure that those countries are ready to receive and administer them, but production capacity and intellectual property rights are not barriers for vaccination. For instance, it was recently reported that the director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention asked for a pause in COVID-19 vaccine donations because the primary challenges for vaccination are country readiness issues and vaccine hesitancy.

The biopharmaceutical industry has embraced our leadership role in responding to COVID-19 and continues to establish effective partnerships and optimize processes to boost manufacturing capacity to keep pace with global demand. The industry is committed to continuing work with governments and non-governmental organizations to address vaccine access challenges.  

+++

Methodology: Airfinity provided data on observed production through January 2022 and forecasted production capacity (as of February 16, 2022) through calendar year 2022 for all COVID-19 vaccines by assuming manufacturers continue to produce at, or scale up to, their announced capacities. The number of doses needed to achieve at least a 70 percent uptake (including a booster 6 months after the final primary dose) in every country is derived from data on vaccinations by country provided by the Our World in Data global database of COVID-19 vaccinations as of January 31, 2022.