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The Basel pharmaceutical company Lonza has received the green light from Swissmedic: the Moderna vaccine will be produced in Valais from the next few days, as the ‘Walliser Bote’ writes.
“Our teams are working hard on the final preparatory work for the implementation of the systems,” said Renzo Cicillini, Lonza plant manager in Visp. “By the end of 2021, 300 million cans will be produced at Visp,” Cicillini said.
Explosive: There will not be enough doses for Switzerland. Although the vaccine has not yet been approved in Switzerland, Swissmedic’s approval for vaccine production is seen as a sign that the time will come soon.
Lack of infrastructure and staff
When vaccination began with the Pfizer / Biontech media, vaccination places were quickly sold out, for example in the canton of Basel-Stadt, where the authorities had to approve more appointments due to high demand. Due to high demand, available vaccines are scarce worldwide, but especially in Switzerland.
Because the authorities reacted late. The federal government didn’t sign a contract with Pfizer until December. In the same month a repeat order was placed for Moderna. So far, Pfizer and Biontech have delivered 107,000 doses of vaccines; Switzerland has only ordered three million doses of the product. There is also a lack of infrastructure and personnel: on December 17, the federal government placed an order for a computer solution that is necessary to carry out a mass vaccination, according to the “NZZ am Sonntag”. Cantons rely on their own solutions, but this will not speed up a solution at the national level.
For the first time, Switzerland will only have small quantities of the 800,000 doses of vaccine that are produced daily in Valais. Also in this case, only 7.5 million cans were ordered late. That’s enough for 3.75 million people, or almost one in two Swiss citizens, according to a Blick report.
Criticism of the authorities
Basel lawyer and health expert Andreas Faller, who was deputy director of the Federal Office of Public Health (BAG) until 2012, is critical of the federal government. A third wave is sure. It is important that many people get vaccinated as soon as possible, he tells the Sunday newspaper. It is the result of a failed policy that Switzerland has far fewer doses available compared to other countries. Even if Moderna’s vaccine is approved in the next few days: Switzerland is not getting enough doses.
The federal government tried to reduce financial risk by waiting and watching. “Compared to the costs of the pandemic, the loss of a few million over-ordered doses of vaccination is negligible,” says Faller. “People die, the economy is damaged, every minute is precious.”
“This is a fiasco”, said the National Councilor of the Valais FDP, Philippe Nantermod (36), meanwhile to the “NZZ am Sonntag”. “Switzerland would have had the means to obtain additional doses of vaccines faster and to prepare the vaccine better.”
