The surprising speed with which two small biotech firms have developed vaccines for Covid-19 puts pressure on regulators to make sure they are safe and on large pharmaceutical companies to produce them at scale and “acceptable” profit margins. “Who would want to be in the shoes of the Federal Drug Administration or the European Medicines Authority today given that the health and economic wellbeing of the planet is riding on whether it is safe to approve the BioNTech and Moderna vaccines,” says Olaf Tölke, head of corporates ratings at Scope.