Pfizer will only deliver half the vaccines it expected to this year

Pfizer.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Pfizer Inc. will only be able to deliver half the COVID-19 vaccine doses it promised to ship by the end of the year, the company said Thursday.

Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech SE projected it would distribute 100 million vaccines worldwide in 2020, but has cut that to 50 million. "Scaling up the raw material supply chain took longer than expected," a spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal, and the vaccine's clinical trial finished "somewhat later than the initial projection" as well. A person directly involved in the vaccine's development meanwhile said "some early batch of raw material failed to meet the standards," leading Pfizer to miss this year's projections.

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Kathryn Krawczyk

Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.