Speedy Vaccine Making Requires Delicate Dance by Drugmakers

Boosting supply of Covid-19 vaccines isn’t as easy as flipping a manufacturing switch—it’s a delicate dance of raw materials and business contracts, pharmaceutical lawyers and consultants say.

Vaccine administration is speeding up. Roughly 1.5 million doses are administered a day in the U.S., according to the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker. But supply constraints still haunt state and federal leaders. The Biden administration invoked the Defense Production Act last week to increase manufacturing.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, drugmakers vowed to work together to make Covid-19 vaccines, even promising to share equipment or manpower if necessary. Few of those business ...