AstraZeneca says open for more vaccine production deals

Britain's AstraZeneca will continue to look for more production partners for the experimental vaccine it is working on with Oxford University but it may be nearing a ceiling with plans laid out so far to make 2 billion doses. AstraZeneca has collaboration deals on a combined output of 1.7 billion doses with Britain, the United States, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Gavi the Vaccine Alliance, as well as the Serum Institute of India and it has additional capacity for 300 million doses not yet allocated, the company said on Thursday.

"We will continue to look into this over the next few months," AstraZeneca's CEO Pascal Soriot told a media briefing when asked whether production could be expanded with yet more partners. "But with two billion (doses) I think we have a pretty good capacity... It would probably make sense for society to bet on two or three different technologies, not only on our vaccine," he added.

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