Little-known US towns saving Australia’s vaccine rollout
A small southwest Michigan city and a Massachusetts college town are home to Pfizer and Moderna, which are on track to supply millions of vaccines to Australia.
World
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There are many reasons why Mayor Patricia Randall from the small southwest Michigan city of Portage knows that she is lucky.
Her hometown generated a modern medical miracle in developing the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, and the pharmaceutical giant has broken ground on a new global supply facility as the region booms.
Where so many American cities have struggled for the past year under the weight of the pandemic, Portage is booming, with its main employer and biggest taxpayer promising jobs for years to come.
“We are riding a wave here,” Randall tells News Corp Australia.
Randall says she is fortunate in that she runs a safe and affordable small city just two hours drive from Chicago and Detroit.
But she is also very thankful that the event that made her city famous was an actual good news story: “I mean we could be Waco, Texas – imagine that!”.
Portage is the global headquarters of Pfizer, which is on track to supply 40 million vaccines to Australia from the three billion doses it is producing in 2021.
“This put us on the map for all the right reasons,” Randall said.
“It was the light of hope that it offered to the world.
“And then to think that it was here and that you have family who worked on it, neighbours that worked there … it’s hard to not know somebody that works there.”
“It starts as a ripple and builds to a wave. It’s hard to quantify what an impact a new job there has on our economy, what it brings to restaurants and retail and schools and things like that. But it’s always very positive.”
Pfizer’s was the first mRNA vaccine approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration in the US last December and a month later by the Therapeutic Good Association in Australia.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a new deal last week for another mRNA vaccine from Moderna for 25 million doses, the latter 15 million coming next year and potentially tweaked for any new variants.
The vast majority of those Moderna shots will be sourced in Cambridge, north of Boston, Massachusetts, a college town where vaccine uptake mirrors the US average of about half the population having been vaccinated.
Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel also said last week the company was in talks to establish domestic vaccine manufacturing capability.
“As we seek to protect people around the world with our COVID-19 vaccine and potentially our variant booster candidates, we look forward to continuing discussions with Australia about establishing potential local manufacturing opportunities,” he said.
After a devastating year of loss of life and livelihood to the pandemic, America is reopening as its vaccination program takes hold and some states begin to approach herd immunity.
The contrast with Australia, where just 3.1 million shots have been delivered and which is set to stay closed to the world until next year, couldn’t be more stark.
Now as supply outstrips demand in the US and vaccine hesitancy sits at 30 per cent, some states are offering a free beer or free public transport to those who get the shot.
Employers are being urged by President Joe Biden to pay sick benefits and time off for workers to be vaccinated and some are offering cash bonuses to employees who get the jab.
“If we let up now and stop being vigilant,” Biden said last month as he announced tax credits to offset the time off costs for small businesses.
“This virus will erase the progress we have already achieved.”
That construction worker Tim Conwell is one of millions of Americans who haven’t had the shot seems a little surprising.
As the site manager for Pfizer’s expansion, the 32-year-old local is reaping the financial benefits of the vaccine breakthrough, but he’s not convinced he needs it.
“It’s great for this area,” he said of the Pfizer technology.
“There’s going to be work, job security here for years.
“It wasn’t that hard to find jobs before, but these are better jobs.”
Around the corner from City Hall, beautician Kelsey Murray, 25, and her college student sister Gabi Mathes, 19, said they felt immensely proud of the city’s connection to the vaccine.
“My boyfriend works at Pfizer and it’s been great just hearing his stories about the FDA and everyone has been so supportive of the vaccine, so I know it’s been really taken care of,” said Murray.
“I think it’s really cool that he’s going to work every day and saving lives.”
Nearby on Celery Flats, a sprawling bush reserve named for the vegetable that previously brought wealth to the town of Portage until the 1980s, high schoolers Natalie Kotecki and Hayden Parker said they had no doubt about the safety of the vaccine.
After a year of remote schooling Parker, 16, said he was “grateful” for his Pfizer vaccine, which gave him no side effects and that he looked forward to a return to in-person classes soon.
“They’re starting to let us not wears masks in places, which is great.
They volunteered🤚 to help change the world🌎 . We're sharing real kids thanking the real heroes, the 12-15 year old #Covid19 vaccine clinical trial volunteers, who are helping us get back to a world where kids can go back to doing the things they loveâ¤ï¸ . #ScienceWillWinpic.twitter.com/85a8qtjnl3
— Pfizer Inc. (@pfizer) May 12, 2021
“I’m also very proud. It’s strange being here in my hometown of Portage where they make the vaccine. It’s kind of wonderful living in this city where the vaccine is being made that is saving people.”
Real estate agent Suzanne McPeek said the area was benefiting greatly from Pfizer’s expansion, but that the growth was leading to a housing shortfall.
“It’s a real sellers market everywhere at the moment because in general people are working from home and they are wanting bigger houses,” McPeek said.
“With Pfizer expanding their facility, that’s going to create more jobs for the area and hopefully we’ll be able to find them homes somehow.”
Although the vaccine is widely cited as being produced in Kalamazoo, Portage’s mayor is at pains to point out that this is not the case.
“Pfizer is known to the world for being from Kalamazoo, Michigan, which is always a beef with the Portage,” she said of the city that is 24km to her north.
“But when … the original pharmaceutical company started, it was just Kalamazoo County.
“So Portage became a city in 1963 and we have a port, a zip code, but they use Kalamazoo, Michigan, on the national news.”
Randall said Pfizer was planning at least 850 new jobs and bringing more families to the region.
“We have about a third of the housing that we had two years ago on the market at this time,” she said.
“And there’s a lot of competition, there’s even bidding wars and that is something we have not had before.”
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