The Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech, manufacturer of one of the most administered vaccines against covid-19 in several Latin American countries, began construction of its first packaging plant in the region on Thursday in Santiago, Chile.
With a capacity to fill and package 50 million doses a year, the plant will be ready before 2023 and will require an investment of 100 million dollars, according to company sources explained in a massive opening ceremony.
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“Sinovac will be dedicated to investment and scientific research in Chile (…) to improve production that allows more people in South America to have access to vaccines,” said the CEO of the Chinese company, Weidong Yin, in a virtual intervention.
The plant, of 22,000 meters of surface, will package vials against covid-19, hepatitis A and influenza, explained to Efe the biochemist Virginia Garretón, vice president of corporate affairs of Sinovac Biotech Chile.
“The vaccines are manufactured in China with the original inactivated virus, sent to the filling plants and here they are packaged under high security conditions for distribution,” he explained.
SINOVAC IN LATIN AMERICA
The Minister of Science, immunologist Flavio Salazar, told Efe that the installation of this plant seeks to “turn Chile into a vaccine distribution pole in Latin America.”
“The centralization in the production of vaccines causes a great inequality of their distribution in case of emergencies such as covid-19,” he said.
The idea is to be able to move towards the “creation of connected systems to articulate regional responses and promote Latin American integration.”
“We are already working on this with Argentina, Mexico and Brazil,” he said.
This week, Sinovac also announced that it will allocate another 100 million dollars for the construction of a vaccine production plant in Bogotá, in a 10-year project that will start in 2023.
THE ROLE OF CHILEAN SCIENTISTS
CoronaVac serum, Sinovac’s vaccine against covid-19, is the majority in Chile and is also present in Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil.
Until June 2021, when the World Health Organization (WHO) approved it for emergency use, the only reliable studies that had transcended its effectiveness and efficiency were those carried out by the University of Chile and the Chilean Government.
The research found that CoronaVac has an efficacy in curbing infections of 65.3%, compared to 95% of Pfizer/BioNTech and 80% of AstraZeneca.
Weidong Yin thanked the work of Chilean scientists on the clinical application of the vaccine and claimed that cooperation with Chinese researchers had been “successful.”
“They have made it possible for CoronaVac to have greater global influence. The results of their research are of great help to the WHO and the formulation of strategies in many countries,” said the CEO of the company, headquartered in Beijing.
Thanks to the massive distribution of CoronaVac, Chile was at the forefront of immunization in the region, with more than 93% of the population with its complete scheme and more than 80% with a booster dose.
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