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Sinovac to Expand Production of COVID-19 Vaccine to 2 Billion Doses

publication date: Jan 22, 2021
 | 
author/source: Richard Daverman, PhD

Sinovac Biotech of Beijing plans to start a second manufacturing line for CoronaVac, the company's inactivated COVID-19 vaccine, with the goal of producing two billion doses this year. CoronaVac is approved for emergency use in China, Indonesia, Brazil and Chile. Sinovac has announced various efficacy rates from clinical trials in several countries outside of China. The company insists the vaccine is 100% effective against serious forms of COVID-19, though it is less so against mild or medium-severity cases.

Sinovac will export semi-finished jabs to some countries, and help build local filling and packaging lines in importing countries to improve the production capacity and efficiency.

"Sinovac has received vaccine orders from Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey, Chile and other countries and regions, and we are making every effort to expand the production capacity," said the company's CEO, Weidong Yin in an interview with Xinhua News. "We hope the vaccine will protect more people around the world."

Mr. Yin said the pandemic requires Sinovac to respond in a humanitarian, rather than a strictly business manner, implying that Sinovac will supply the vaccine to countries at an affordable cost, though he did not give details.

Sinovac has conducted Phase III trials of CoronaVac in Brazil, Indonesia and Turkey. In the Brazil trial, it was 78% effective in preventing COVID-19 while it showed 100% efficacy against severe forms of the disease. In Indonesia, it produced an efficacy of 65.3% and an efficacy of 91.3% in Turkey. The fact that the results are not consistent has caused some concern, but Sinovac said the variance is probably caused by difference in the enrollees.

The overall results show the vaccine is effective, Sinovac said. Although the 78% of Brazil is less than the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, which both produced a 95% efficacy, the Sinovac vaccine was better than flu drugs, which are approved if they are effective in 50% of recipients.  

Sinovac's CoronaVac has the advantage of allowing shipping at higher temperatures than the Moderna and Pfizer’s vaccines, and it is much less expensive than they are. In China, CoronaVac was approved for emergency use in July, before the company concluded a large Phase III trial.

See our other articles on Sinovac.

Disclosure: none.

 

 

 

 


 

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