Although the five treatments being developed by China’s scientists for Covid-19 are still months away from a full evaluation, the country is laying the foundations to begin manufacturing vaccines as soon as they are given the green light.
Secure facilities are already being built for this purpose.
The facilities will have a biosecurity rating of 3, the second highest level, because Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, is highly pathogenic and will need a secure environment if it used to make the vaccine.
Four of the five Chinese candidates are inactivated vaccines – a technique that involves killing the virus so that it cannot cause a serious infection but does stimulate an immune response and requires secure facilities.
The other Chinese vaccine, and five developed in other countries, are using genetic techniques that need lower levels of biosecurity because the actual Sars-CoV-2 virus is not used in the production process.
Phase 2 trials of the vaccines are expected to end in July, but there is a question mark over the phase 3 trials – which will need thousands of volunteers – because there have not been enough new cases in China to run trials there.
Yet Chinese regulators and developers are still keen to develop the vaccines as quickly as possible.
Yu Qingming, party secretary of SinoPharm, a subsidiary of state-owned China National Pharmaceutical Group which owns China National Biotec Group (CNBG), said two facilities had been built at “wartime speed”.
Two CNBG subsidiaries – the Beijing Institute of Biological Products and Wuhan Institute of Biological Products – have designed inactivated vaccines that are undergoing phase 2 trials.
“The facility in Beijing has been completed and is in the process of qualifying for certification. The annual production capacity will be 100 million doses. The workshop in Wuhan has finished building the main structure … Its annual production capacity will be 80 million doses,” Yu said.
“After the two workshops begin production, they will effectively meet the need for large-scale inoculation and provide important guarantees over the availability and affordability of Covid-19 vaccines.”
Zhu Jingjin, party secretary of the CNBG, told state broadcaster CCTV last month this production capacity would meet the demands of “special population groups”, which he said included health workers, diplomatic staff, students studying abroad and people working on overseas infrastructure projects under the Belt and Road Initiative.
China has previously said it intends to vaccinate certain groups by the end of the year even if the trials have not finished.
Sinovac Research & Development, which recently received US$15 million in funding from two investors to boost the development of an inactivated vaccine dubbed CoronaVac, is also building a level 3 production facility in Beijing’s Daxing district.
The company said in a statement that it is in talks with the World Health Organisation and regulators of “relevant countries” over a phase three human trial.
The company hopes to be able to produce 100 million doses a year and plans to run production tests in July.
(Source: SCMP)
