Inside Pfizer’s race to produce the world’s biggest supply of covid vaccine

The first attempt to produce industrial-scale quantities of the experimental vaccine that has played a central role in arresting the coronavirus pandemic in the United States was a total failure.

Operators at a Pfizer plant outside Kalamazoo hoped the trial run could provide quick validation of the company’s gamble on a newfangled mRNA technology. It also was an early test of Pfizer’s strategy of refusing government aid to develop and rapidly ramp up commercial scale production of its vaccine.

But as soon as pressure built in the array of pumps, tubes and...