Pfizer to deliver more Covid-19 vaccine doses to US

A change in the vaccine's label will allow Washington to extract six doses instead of five from each vial.

That will allow the US to obtain 200m doses of the vaccine by the end of May, instead of a previous deadline of 31 July.

The modification will also apply to supply contracts moving forwards.

It will also the country to tap 120m doses over the first quarter, up from the 100m previously estimated.

Pfizer chief, Albert Bourla also told Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief, John Micklethwait, that the two firms would be able to boost supplies to the European Union before the end of the second quarter.

The label change had been postponed due to the need to gather the data needed for governments to approve the change.

Bourla also emphasised the need to inject the second vaccine dose within the 19 to 42 window following the first dose, as per the results of the company's clinical trial.

Separately, the new US administration of President Joe Biden announced its intention to purchase 100m more vaccine doses from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, each, for a combined total from the three companies of 600m.

The new shipments would be expected to be made over the summer and in theory should suffice to vaccinate almost the entire US population.

Also on Tuesday, French drug giant, Sanofi, announced that it would help Pfizer and BioNtech by using excess capacity to fill and pack 100m doses of their vaccine from July.

Sanofi is also working with US outfit Translate Bio on another Covid-19 vaccine candidate that also utilises mRNA technology, such as that employed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

First phase clinical trials for that vaccine candidate were set to begin in the first quarter.