Israel to weigh opening of COVID-19 vaccine production plant – The Jerusalem Post

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will ask the government to approve a resolution to establish a team to consider the establishment of a coronavirus vaccine plant in Israel, the Prime Ministers Office announced on Friday.

"We are working around the clock in a variety of ways to protect the health of the citizens of Israel, Bennett said. The ability to self-produce vaccines in Israel could be dramatic, especially with a forward-looking view of future epidemics. Professional teams will examine this and make a decision soon.

The announcement was made in collaboration with Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz.

The team would be headed by the accountant general of the Finance Ministry and it would conduct an orderly procedure and consult with relevant professionals in order to formulate the best way to establish the plant, the announcement said.

If established, the plant would be required to produce a variety of medications, while prioritizing vaccines, with an eye toward regular commercial activities.

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At the same time, the plant would have the ability to adapt its activities to produce vaccines during emergencies, ideally using a variety of technologies.

Back in March, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Austrias Sebastian Kurz and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced during a visit to Israel an agreement between their countries to set up a research and development fund and manufacturing plants for coronavirus vaccines in Israel and Europe.

We will be, together, Vaccination Nations, Netanyahu said of the deal at that time. We agreed that if other nations want to join us, we will discuss this among ourselves and welcome others to come in as well.

Netanyahu long discussed establishing a vaccine production plant in Israel, potentially with Pfizer or Moderna, or an independent facility that would make the Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) COVID-19 vaccine a vaccine that is still stalled on its Phase II trial.

In May, Pfizer confirmed for The Jerusalem Post that the company had no plans to open such a plant nor a research and development facility that Netanyahu described in Israel.

Ive checked internally and confirmed that we do not have plans for this, a senior manager for corporate communications said. It sounds like the talk around it has been coming from local politicians.

However, Yeruham Mayor Tal Ohana said that even before coronavirus there was hope to establish a vaccine plant like the one described by Bennett in her town.

In August 2020, when IIBR launched its Phase I trial for its coronavirus vaccine, Netanyahu asked the institute to start setting up a production plant at the same time. To date, there has been little or no progress on such a plant, although according to Ohana the Defense Ministry and other commercial partners potentially involved in such a plant had been to the city multiple times.

Today, Israel is completely dependent on external intellectual property and external manufacturing capacity, BiondVax CEO Amir Reichman told the Post in a previous interview.

BiondVax is a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing, manufacturing and ultimately commercializing products for the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases and related illnesses, its website described. The company is traded on Nasdaq.

With this pandemic, we were lucky because early in the pandemic we contracted and secured vaccine deliveries, Reichman said, though he noted that in a future pandemic, Israel might not be so lucky. It is important for Israel to have both the IP (intellectual property) and the capacity to manufacture vaccines.

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Israel to weigh opening of COVID-19 vaccine production plant - The Jerusalem Post