Vaccine firms go full steam ahead to meet demand

Improving supply chains

The country's development and management of supply chains for COVID-19 vaccines has also improved rapidly thanks to early preparation, according to officials.

Mao Junfeng, deputy director of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Department of Industry of Consumer Products, said 18 vaccine producers in China had recently started to build up production capacity.

Three of them, including Sinopharm's unit in Beijing, had passed biosafety risk appraisals from the authorities, completing a key step toward mass production, he said at a news conference last week.

The other two leading producers are Sinovac Biotech in Beijing and the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products in Hubei province.

The company in Hubei, which is also administered by Sinopharm, has set up facilities that house both research laboratories and manufacturing plants in three months, according to Sinopharm. The infrastructure, completed in July, is designed to produce 100 million doses annually.

At Sinovac Biotech, its production lines were operating round-the-clock, capable of filling 600 doses per minute, Wang Xuesong, an employee at the company, told Beijing Evening News in late December.

According to Wang, with completion of the second stretch of production lines nearing, the company's annual production capacity is set to double to 600 million doses.

"Our production capability is likely to expand further in the future based on market demand and funds available," he said.

Meanwhile, Indonesia announced on Sunday it will start distributing the vaccine developed by Sinovac to all of its 34 provinces, joining the growing ranks of foreign countries approving China-developed vaccines.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Monday that China will continue to work with other parties for the fair distribution of vaccines globally, making joint efforts in fighting the novel coronavirus and safeguarding the health of people across the world.

Mo Jingxi contributed to this story.