China May Have Flu Vaccine by July

Sinovac Biotech Ltd. announced on Monday that full-scale production is underway on an H1N1 flu pandemic vaccine that could be ready for use by the end of July.

Sinovac said it received a H1N1 strain from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on June 8.

The company, which is developing the vaccine using chicken eggs, says the vaccine is taking approximately 50 days to produce, although traditional egg-based technology requires some six months.

The first batch of the vaccine will be tested for safety and effectiveness and then Sinovac Biotech will submit it to China's SFDA for approval.

The initial manufacturing run will include 150 thousand doses.

[Gong Xuejie, Regulatory Director, Sinovac Biotech Ltd.]:
"The most difficult part is that we are not sure about the performance of the virus seed since it is completely new to us. And time is very short. We don't know whether we will be able to produce enough vaccines before the second wave of mass breakout."

Sinovac's current annual manufacturing capacity is around 20 to 30 million doses of pandemic influenza vaccine.

Mainland China has confirmed 185 cases of H1N1 influenza, but has no reported deaths.

Influenza experts believe that tests have turned up only a fraction of the true number of cases of the virus.

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