APR September/October 2020 - 61

VENDOR VIEWPOINT

There is growing concern that glass manufacturers cannot meet the
surge in demand for the launch of a COVID-19 vaccine.21,22 This is
compounded with the existing and growing demand of the biologics
market. The ability to rapidly ramp up production capacity is essential
to meet the short-term Operation Warp Speed goal of 300 million
doses by January of 2021 and hundreds of million more after that. We
believe that SiO2 technology has a clear advantage over traditional
glass manufacturing in rapidly scaling up production capacity. This is
enabled by state-of-the-art molding equipment for the cyclic olefin
polymer vial and plasma coating modules that can add capacity as
simple as plugging in additional USB devices to a laptop. Over 80
million vial units of annual vial capacity is already in place at SIO2 in
Auburn, Alabama with another 50 million units expected to come
on-line by December 1st. It takes approximately 3-4 months to add
additional capacity.

Figure 4. Particle counts measured by light
obscuration across 6 different lots of 6 mL SiO2 vials.
The USP 789 limits for particle >10 and >25 micron in
size are shown.
Primary Container Selection for COVID-19 Vaccines
The current pandemic has the world preparing for the safe delivery of
a COVID-19 vaccine. Uncertainty about the performance of ordinary
glass under cold storage, the ability to scale up quickly, supply chain
issues and fill-finish compatibility has vaccine developers and the US
government considering better packaging options. We believe SiO2 is
well-positioned to supply high quality products to regulated markets
at very high volume. If compromise is not an option for new COVID-19
vaccines to manage risk, we believe SiO2 primary packaging provides
the best possible solution.

References
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APR September/October 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of APR September/October 2020
