A Race Against Covid-19

A CNBC DOCUMENTARY - Watch on CNBC

The decision to pivot an entire business to focus on the coronavirus is an obvious one in hindsight, at least for Moderna, BioNTech and Pfizer, which succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations — and will reap billions of dollars in sales of their vaccines this year alone. It wasn’t such a clear decision in the early months of 2020, though that’s when Moderna’s chief executive, Stephane Bancel, and BioNTech’s chief, Ugur Sahin, starting turning their ships, they told CNBC in interviews for this documentary about the vaccine race, directed by CNBC senior digital producer Sam Rega and produced by CNBC senior health and science reporter Meg Tirrell. Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s CEO, confirmed Sahin’s account, saying in the earliest months of 2020, he was focused on maintaining the company’s operations in China. But by late February, he said, he’d determined Pfizer needed to work on a treatment and a vaccine. The companies succeeded, in what became one of the greatest medical races in history. Here, they recall how it happened.