Pfizer’s Albert Bourla on how the pandemic ends
FREDERICK KEMPE: Give us a little bit of a feeling of when you saw that COVID-19 was going to be the challenge that it became and what did you move to take it on? And if I’m not mistaken, mRNA vaccines had never been used for clinical use before. I’d love for you to talk about what you spotted early on, how you moved things, but then the role that mRNA plays during this period of time.
ALBERT BOURLA: Yes. In January, [our entire discipline was] thinking that COVID-19 is an issue that mainly concerns China, and we were very concerned because of that, because we have significant operations in China. We had fifteen thousand people at that time, we had four manufacturing sites, and we were worried about our people and how they would be able to maintain their jobs.
So we set up a task force that was really following very closely what was happening in China and we were trying to make sure that we do the right things. In February, it started becoming clear to me that this might go outside of China, and then in the second half of February, I was in Europe to attend an Economic Forum meeting and I went there and then two days before, and then the forum was canceled because of COVID-19. That was, for me, an important alarm went off. I realized that things are serious.
That was the first time that a conference like that was canceled. I took a plane [back], and on the plane, I wrote down the priorities that I felt that a company like ours should have, and the first was that we need to make sure that we protect the safety of our people. The second was we need to make sure that we maintain the supply of critical medicines to people. I had seen in China that hospitals were overwhelmed, and we are one of the biggest suppliers of hospital products in the world.
So I was thinking how we could maintain a surge in demand that could be 20, 30, 40, or 50 percent higher for some products than we had before, while our plants had to operate under COVID-19 restrictions. Very challenging. I asked that that would be a number two priority. And then number three was that we need to develop a vaccine and a treatment.
And we came back, and I asked our team to develop a vaccine, then bring me plans. They brought me plans that they wanted to use the mRNA technology. I was puzzled when they told me. I was very familiar with mRNA technology because we had hired people back in 2015 [who] specialized in mRNA.
