Pfizer CEO confident vaccine supply will exceed needs by end of 2021

Pfizer Inc's chief executive, Albert Bourla, said on Wednesday he was confident that by the end of 2021 there would be more vaccine doses than required to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

His remarks came after Britain approved a vaccine produced by Pfizer and its German biotechnology partner BioNTech on Wednesday. The two companies say their vaccine is 95% effective.

"I feel very comfortable that by the end of 2021 we'll have more doses than we will need," Bourla told a virtual conference hosted in Athens. "We are doing everything we can to increase the manufacturing capacity ... but the challenge is that we need to increase it in the next few months."

The British Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) granted emergency use approval just 23 days after Pfizer published the first data from its final-stage clinical trial. The vaccine is due to be...