KUALA LUMPUR – Pharmaniaga Bhd has the capacity to manufacture two million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Sinovac Life Sciences Co Ltd per month beginning March this year.
Group managing director Datuk Zulkarnain Md Eusope said the vaccine would be the first to be manufactured in Malaysia at the small-volume, injectable, high-tech plant owned by Pharmaniaga’s wholly owned subsidiary, Pharmaniaga LifeSciences Sdn Bhd, in Puchong.
He said the group will invest RM3 million to retrofit the plant to enable the production of the vaccine.
“We are confident that we can carry out this task successfully, because our technical experts have been working on setting up a halal vaccine plant in Malaysia since 2017,” he said.
“When Covid-19 spread around the world early last year, we immediately facilitated our team in working with our global partners, including Sinovac, on the fill and finish manufacturing activity and technology transfer to speed up the availability of vaccines against the pandemic,” he told reporters after an agreement was signed between Pharmaniaga and Sinovac Life Sciences today.
The signing ceremony was witnessed by Senior Minister (Security Cluster) and Defence Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob, Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba, and Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin.
Pharmaniaga is set to carry out the fill and finish of the Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine, which is expected to be ready for public distribution by the end of March.
The agreement is for the completion of fill and finish for 14 million doses of the vaccine.
Pharmaniaga has been engaging with the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) to ensure that its plant continues to be in high compliance of regulatory requirements.
Zulkarnain said the Sinovac vaccine has undergone phase three trials in Brazil and Turkey, and is now in the process of getting approvals in both countries.
“Currently, we are in the discussions with NPRA for registration and they have been very supportive of this project. We are confident that we can manufacture and have the vaccines ready for distribution to hospitals by the end of March this year," he added.
Meanwhile, Khairy said the agreement between Pharmaniaga and Sinovac is a private initiative.
“We facilitated it because indicated to Pharmaniaga that we are interested in the Sinovac vaccine.
“Now the government’s procurement (of) part of it, hopefully, will be concluded by next week,” he added.
Khairy assured that the vaccine programme for Covid-19 will be carried out within the first quarter of this year.
“We are not too late or too early. We can design our immunisation programme, which can reduce a lot of wastage and be rolled out as efficiently as possible,” he added. – Bernama, January 12, 2021
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