Coronavirus Vaccine Makers Are Hunting for Vital Equipment : Glass Vials

By Jared S. Hopkins and Drew Hinshaw

Frantic efforts to bring coronavirus vaccines to the world are facing a maddening bottleneck: the small glass vials that hold the shots.

Drugmakers in the U.S., Europe, China, and elsewhere are pushing ahead to test and manufacture vaccines against the new coronavirus, hoping to distribute billions of shots once they have proven to work safely. Yet hampering the ramp-up, industry officials said, is a shortage of vials and the special glass they are made from.

Medical glass had been in shortage for several months. Now major makers such as Corning Inc. say drugmakers and governments are making big moves to line up supplies for Covid-19 vaccines. Johnson & Johnson alone bought 250 million vials. Schott AG, one of the world's biggest medical glassmakers, says the requests it has received for a billion vials are double what it can produce this year. To secure its own stores, one global nonprofit is buying glass production lines.

"Everybody who's making a vaccine wants access to the vials," said John Chiminski, chief executive of Catalent Inc., a contract manufacturer making vaccines for AstraZeneca PLC and other drugmakers. "Where's all that glass going to come from?"

The supply challenge speaks to the obstacles threatening an immunization drive unlike any the global medical industry has ever attempted.

Much public attention has focused on the advances made by researchers developing coronavirus vaccines. Also important and challenging, industry officials say, is more rudimentary but essential work -- making sure there will be enough stoppers, syringes and other packaging components.

A vaccine candidate from Merck & Co. needs to be stored in ultracold freezers, a serious challenge for countries that lack such equipment or suffer frequent electrical blackouts. Merck initially will store its candidate at very low temperatures in the laboratory and will work toward developing it so it can be stored at typical refrigerator conditions, a spokesman said.

Driving the vial shortage are limited reserves of the niche but crucial material the small containers are made from. Medical glass is different from the ordinary grades used for household containers or cups. Glass for pharmaceuticals contains chemicals that make it resistant to drastic temperature changes and keep vaccines stable. Making vials from the special glass, which can take days or even weeks, involves melting the raw materials, fitting them into long tubes and then converting the tubes into vials.

Vials typically cost less than $1 apiece, industry officials said. Gerresheimer AG, which is making vials for large vaccine makers, hasn't raised prices despite the demand for glass because of the seriousness of the pandemic, said Chief Executive Dietmar Siemssen. "We are not squeezing our customers," he said.

Even before the new coronavirus emerged, medical-glass supplies had tightened as China began to require containers for long-term storage of pharmaceutical products. Efforts to round up medical glass for coronavirus vaccines and drugs being used to treat Covid-19 patients have worsened the shortage, according to pharmaceutical and glass industry officials.

"There is a global glass shortage," said James Robinson, a consultant who is helping the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, an Oslo-based group that is financing coronavirus vaccine projects.

The group bought production lines at factories in Italy and Mexico out of concern that countries may prevent exports of medical glass to preserve their own supplies. "Everyone's concerned about where their materials are made right now because we don't know how politics will control the flow of medical supplies," Mr. Robinson said.

J&J's purchase of 250 million vials in the U.S. at the start of the pandemic left other vaccine makers searching for glass, said Mr. Robinson, who spent three decades in vaccine manufacturing at various drugmakers. The company's vaccine candidate is expected to begin human trials next month.

J&J said its partnerships with regulators, health-care organizations, suppliers and institutions world-wide will help quickly produce more than a billion doses globally.

Corning said last week it signed a $204 million deal with the U.S. government to expand its manufacturing capacity and produce medical-glass vials for coronavirus vaccines. Under the deal, Corning plans to produce tens of millions of vials in the coming weeks, said Ronald Verkleeren, who oversees the glassmaker's life sciences division.

Pfizer Inc. signed a long-term supply agreement for medical glass with Corning last month. Pfizer and partner BioNTech SE, which are developing a coronavirus vaccine, are evaluating whether to use Corning glass for packaging, a Pfizer spokeswoman said.

"Everybody is trying to secure the supply," said Frank Heinricht, chairman of Germany's Schott, which says it manufactures half the world's medical glass for pharmaceuticals.

Major vaccine makers have asked Schott for about 1 billion glass vials, Dr. Heinricht said, but his firm can only produce 500 million vials for Covid-19 vaccines by the end of the year. To meet the demand, Schott is tapping into its reserves of medical glass, increasing production and buying more machinery to expand capacity.

What also might help, Dr. Heinricht said, is the likelihood that only two or three vaccines prove to work safely, which would mean not every drugmaker will need vials and glassmakers won't have to fill all their orders.

Ordinarily, vaccines for viruses such as the seasonal flu, measles or polio are stored in individually wrapped, single-use plastic syringes. They take longer to make than vials, however, so drugmakers plan to package their coronavirus vaccines in vials, at least initially, and let doctors and nurses draw out the shots by syringe.

Drugmakers are also exploring alternative packaging that could reduce demand for vials made from medical glass. Some companies are studying the use of multi-dose vials. One packaging option under review is a 200-dose plastic bag that could be withdrawn from with a syringe.

Pharmaceutical companies including Moderna Inc. are testing their vaccines in vials from SiO2 Materials Science, which makes plastic vials that contain a microscopic layer of glass inside, said Chief Business Officer Lawrence Ganti.

The U.S. government also awarded privately held SiO2 a $143 million contract for 120 million vials by November. The effort, which will provide packaging for about 1.2 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines, will take about a quarter of the time that it would take to make the vials out of medical glass, Mr. Ganti said.

Write to Jared S. Hopkins at [e-mail] and Drew Hinshaw at [e-mail]