Pfizer's Covid Moon Shot

Albert Bourla has boldly predicted his company might find and distribute a vaccine by this fall. The first look inside a $1 billion bet that could change the world.

- Nathan Vardi

IN THE MIDDLE OF MARCH, PFIZER CHIEF Albert Bourla beamed into a Webex video call with the leaders of the American pharmaceutical giant’s vaccine research and manufacturing groups.

The two teams had worked late into the night on a robust development plan for Pfizer’s experimental Covid-19 vaccine and told Bourla that they aimed to make it available lightning-fast. It could be ready sometime in 2021.

“Not good enough,” Bourla said. The faces of the researchers tensed up, and conscious of the Herculean effort that had taken place, Bourla made sure to thank them. But he also kept pushing. He asked if people on the call thought the virus might come back in the fall, and what they expected would happen if a vaccine were not available when a new flu season hit at the same time, an issue the federal Centers for Disease Control raised weeks later.

“Think in different terms,” Bourla told them. “Think you have an open checkbook, you don’t need to worry about such things. Think that we will do things in parallel, not sequential. Think you need to build manufacturing of a vaccine before you know what’s working. If it doesn’t, let me worry about it and we will write it off and throw it out.”

Says Mikael Dolsten, Pfizer’s chief scientific officer: “He challenged the team to aim for a moon shot-like goal — to have millions of doses of vaccine in the hands of vulnerable populations before the end of the year.”