Get Ready to Ramp Up Production When Vaccine Comes, HHS Advises

Biotech companies should prepare now to ramp up production for Covid-19 vaccines and treatments to prevent manufacturing delays that could hinder patient access, a key HHS official said.

Federal authorities want to “ensure that when we have a vaccine or drug available, there are multiple facilities able to scale up and manufacture and produce and fill and finish and deliver those vaccines and drugs and reagents as quickly as possible,” Rick A. Bright said Tuesday during a Biotechnology Innovation Organization virtual summit on the novel coronavirus.

Bright is the director of the Biomedical Advances Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which ...