BioNTech announced it will lay off 63 employees at its manufacturing facility in Gaithersburg on August 9, 2025. The German pharmaceutical firm acquired the facility in 2021, riding the company's financial boom from COVID-19 vaccine profits at the time. But expectations that Americans would line up once or more per year for COVID booster shots for the rest of their lives proved a mirage.
Contrary to government declarations, the vaccine did not prevent the recipient from contracting the virus. And reports of vaccine injuries, increasing vaccine skepticism, and the Biden administration's 2022 declaration that "COVID is over" proved to be the final nails in the vaccine coffin.
The failure of one of BioNTech's new cancer treatments in testing earlier this year was apparently the last straw, as the company has now chosen to not pursue that product line any further. BioNTech's announcement was a body blow to Montgomery County and Maryland elected officials. Biotech is the only real bright spot in the otherwise-moribund Montgomery County economy, which has failed to attract a major corporate headquarters in over 25 years, and is at, or near, rock-bottom in the region by every relevant metric of job creation, new business starts, and business growth, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
No big corporation would make its people have to try and live in Montgomery County. Too expensive for the corporation and impossible for their employees.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the closing of BioNTech is a fact and potenially the reduction of the need for the Covid vaccine contributed, the article is full of diguised politcal innunendos and not creible journalism. Suggest hiring real reporters, not unless stated as such "opinion columnists" if the Rockville Times expects to be received as a credible information source.
ReplyDelete8:20: Where are the factual inaccuracies in the article?
DeleteSome economic blow Chicken Little. They only employed 63 people and 50 of those were inherited from the Kite Pharma unit in July 2021. Try fishing in a bigger pond when you find the proper bait.
DeleteMontgomery County is not the place to do corporate business. The country leadership has insured that.
ReplyDeleteYou are so right. The 'country' leadership is responsible for most of our business issues at the moment. Freud is happy with your comment.
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