Siemens, BioNTech expand collaboration for global vaccine production as the fight against the pandemic intensifies

WORLD – German biotechnology company BioNTech SE and Siemens, a German tech company have intensified their collaboration for the rapid expansion and creation of production capacity for the Covid-19 vaccine.

BioNTech is aiming to establish a new production site for the production of COVID-19 vaccines in Marburg and Singapore as it has already converted an existing plant into a vaccine production facility through the help of Siemens.

Under this cooperation, Siemens will provide the latest automation and digitalization technologies for BioNTech production sites, such as design, simulation, and engineering software as well as process control technology.

This collaboration is timely as the world health organization (WHO) is striving to eradicate the pandemic through vaccine campaigns and programs.

At the moment, the global tally of Corona virus cases stands at 180 million with more than 3.9 million related deaths and as at 24 June 2021, there has been 179,241,734 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 3,889,723 deaths, reported to WHO.

Americas tops the list with 177,294 the follows South-East Asia with 86,468 Europe comes in third with 57,960, as East Mediterranean, Africa and West Pacific comes in at fourth, fifth and sixth with cases of 33,469, 28,083 and 15,463 respectively.

According to Our World in Data (OWD), 22.4% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine as a total of 2.8 billion doses have been administered globally, and 40.8 million are now administered each day.

Though the vaccine roll-out program is ongoing, countries in low income areas are still far behind in the vaccination program with only 0.9 % citizens in the low-income countries receiving at least one dose of the vaccine.

This has prompted several super nations to make donations of their surplus vaccines to others nations that are short-handed in the vaccine program.

Japan pledged it would send 2 million additional doses of AstraZeneca Plc’s COVID-19 vaccine to Taiwan and Vietnam and arrangements are being made to send 1 million doses each to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

This direct donation is set to help Japan Increase its diplomatic influence across Asia under the WHO program dubbed COVAX scheme meant to cover a 200-million dose shortfall.