CHENGDU, China (Reuters) – China is likely to produce 3 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of the year, a National Health Commission official said on Saturday.
Zheng Zhongwei, who also leads a team coordinating the country’s COVID-19 vaccine development projects, made the comment during an industrial event in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu in Sichuan Province.
“In the second half of this year, we are fully able to meet our own demand,” Zheng said.
Although producers are rapidly expanding their production capacity, it is not clear whether production has grown as fast. Production tripled from February 1 to the end of March to 5 million doses a day, the government said in its latest update.
Sinovac Biotech, the main vaccine manufacturer, said this month that it has doubled its annual production capacity to 2 billion doses after the completion of its third production unit.
China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) also has a combined annual production capacity of at least 1.1 billion for two separate vaccines. The company said it intends to increase capacity to 3 billion, but did not specify a time frame.
Sinopharm said on Friday it would be able to supply 100 million COVID-19 vaccines a month from April.
Reporting by Roxanne Liu and David Stanway; Edited by Christian Schmollinger and William Mallard