COVID-19 vaccines: China is deploying the 2 Billions doses production in 2021

COVID-19 vaccines: China is deploying the 2 Billions doses production in 2021. Before the Kexing (SINOVAC) vaccine is officially approved by the Chinese government, Kexing is urgently recruiting personnel related to vaccine production on a large scale.

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On January 20, as a new coronavirus vaccine research and development company, the emergency human resources and social security department of Beijing Kexing Zhongwei Biotechnology Co., Ltd. issued an urgent need for professional and technical talents. Need to recruit about 1,000 engineers, including:

500 sub-assembly engineers,
200 packaging engineers,
100 production technical engineers,
80 quality inspection engineers,
20 quality supervision engineers,
70 engineers in the engineering equipment department.

The current global epidemic is serious, and there is an urgent demand for vaccines. It is also difficult to find professional skills such as pharmacy, chemistry, biology, packaging (mechanical related fields), and personnel outages will inevitably affect vaccine production capacity.

Kexing Holding Biotechnology Co., Ltd. spokesperson Liu Peicheng introduced in an interview with the 21st Century Business Herald on January 5 that the COVID-19 vaccine production line built and put into use in the first phase of Kexing Zhongwei has an annual production capacity of over 300 million doses. It will be completed soon. After the second-phase production line is put into use, the annual production capacity will be increased to more than 600 million doses.

However, Yin Weidong, chairman of Coxing Zhongwei, said in an interview with Xinhua News Agency shortly after that, in order to ensure global supply, Coxing has completed the first-phase production line and quickly put into the second-phase production line construction. After the production in February, the vaccine will be available in 2021. The annual output will exceed 1 billion doses.

The rapid expansion of production capacity explains the company’s recent large-scale emergency recruitment behavior.

At present, the production capacity of SINOPHARM‘s new coronavirus inactivated vaccine in 2021 has reached more than 1 billion doses. This means that the annual production capacity of only two vaccine companies, Sinopharm and Kexing, has exceeded 2 billion doses.

Can China’s vaccine production capacity meet domestic and foreign demand?

Liu Jingzhen, Chairman of Sinopharm Group introduced not long ago that more than a dozen countries have put forward COVID-19 vaccine requirements to Sinopharm Group. Judging from relevant information, it is estimated that there are about 20 potential export countries of Sinopharm vaccines, and the potential order for vaccines should be about 300 million to 500 million doses.

Yin Weidong also introduced that Kexing has successively received vaccine orders from Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey, Chile and other countries and regions. “We are making every effort to expand production capacity and hope that China’s COVID-19 vaccine can protect more people around the world.”

At present, Kexing vaccine has obtained emergency use license in Brazil and Indonesia. Kexing has also adopted the method of exporting semi-finished products with some cooperative countries, adding local filling and packaging lines in importing countries to increase global supply capacity.

“On the basis of an annual output of 1 billion doses, we will continue to expand production capacity, because the epidemic of new coronavirus pneumonia and the uncertainty of society’s demand for vaccines cannot be measured and solved by business models alone.” Yin Weidong said.

Yang Xiaoming, Chairman of Sinopharm Group China Biotech, introduced that in order to allow more people to be vaccinated, the production line of the COVID-19 vaccine has been fully operational, and work is not stopped 24 hours a day. With the use of new technology and new equipment, the production line It can produce about 300 vaccines per minute. In order to meet the national and even global demand for vaccines, the group has also increased its production lines, but even so, the vaccine production workshop is expected to only produce 1 billion doses of vaccine each year. The vaccine requires two injections per person, which means that even if it meets the Chinese market, it will take at least two years to produce it.

It is not optimistic to meet global demand in the short term.

A person in charge of Sanofi Pasteur Vaccines China has calculated an account to the 21st Century Business Herald: There are about 7.5 billion people in the world today, and it takes about 70% of the population, that is, 5.2 billion people, to be vaccinated to form population immunity in the world. , Most vaccines require two or even three injections, which means that at least 10 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine are needed, while the previous global vaccine production capacity of all categories was only more than 3 billion doses.

“This means that while ensuring the supply of other vaccines, the production capacity of the COVID-19 vaccine needs to be tripled on the basis of all the existing vaccine production capacity. At the same time, this puts a lot of pressure on vaccine production, cold chain transportation, and vaccination. .”

The recent white paper jointly issued by the international logistics giants DHL and McKinsey shows that after the advent of the COVID-19 vaccine, global orders will exceed 10 billion doses, which will require about 200,000 pallet shipments, 15 million cooling box shipments, and approximately 15,000 full-loaded Boeing 747 freighters are transported. At the same time, the world’s vaccine production capacity is limited. It is difficult to produce so many vaccines in a short time.

As a large manufacturing country, China’s rapidly increasing vaccine production capacity is expected to assume a more difficult mission.

Not long ago, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology stated that at present, the three companies of Sinopharm Zhongsheng Beijing Company, Sinopharm Zhongsheng Wuhan Company, and Beijing Kexing Zhongwei Company have all the conditions for large-scale production, and their vaccine production has started the “accelerated” mode, and the company’s staff is high. Work intensively and at full capacity, race against time and organize production around the clock.

Mao Junfeng, deputy director of the Consumer Goods Industry Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, previously introduced that 18 companies in China have begun to build COVID-19 virus vaccine production capacity. The increase in vaccine production capacity is a dynamic process. In addition to the above-mentioned inactivated vaccines, other technical routes vaccine production capacity construction It is also proceeding in an orderly manner as planned, “With the further increase in the production capacity of the COVID-19 inactivated vaccine and the completion of other technical routes, the production capacity of China’s COVID-19 virus vaccine can meet China’s domestic demand for large-scale vaccination.”