South African born US biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong yesterday launched a plant that will produce a billion Covid-19 vaccine doses a year in Cape Town by 2025. Bloomberg reports that this would make it the biggest such factory in Africa, comparable in size to BioNTech’s Marburg, Germany-based mRNA plant where they manufacture the vaccine they developed with Pfizer. The plant, which could employ 400 to 600 people, is ultimately dependent on the vaccine his companies are developing getting approval, though trials are currently underway in a number of countries, including South Africa, Botswana, and Australia.
