Chinese pharmaceutical group CanSino Biologics said demand for its Covid-19 vaccine was “dying down” in China after the abrupt end of the country’s tough zero-Covid policies, underscoring the challenges facing the sector in the largest remaining under-vaccinated market.
CanSino was in the middle of rolling out an inhaled version of a coronavirus vaccine when China shed lockdown restrictions in early December. The vaccine had received emergency approval, adding to the existing dozen domestic vaccines serving the Chinese population.
Yu Xuefeng, co-founder and chief executive of the Tianjin-based group, said it had rolled out “millions of doses” before the “surprise end of zero-Covid”. But Yu added that the campaign was outpaced by the virus, which infected an estimated 80 per cent of the population within weeks.
“We were chasing to deliver our vaccine as quickly as we could to win time over the virus. But at the end of the day, I think the virus spread much quicker than we expected,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times.
Chinese health authorities advise infected patients to wait six months after recovery before receiving a booster shot, causing demand for vaccines to plummet after the majority of the population caught the virus over a short period.
CanSino is developing a messenger RNA vaccine candidate, which Yu said showed “positive results” in phase 2 clinical trials in China. It had demonstrated a “high safety profile” and stronger immune response than the “inactivated” vaccine technology of incumbents, according to the company. This could be the first mRNA product to be deployed for therapeutic use in China if it receives regulatory approval.
Beijing has refused to import BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA jabs for its domestic population, despite research showing they provide higher level and more long-lasting protection than the widely used inactivated vaccines made by China’s Sinopharm and Sinovac.
CanSino has two research and development teams, one in Tianjin focused on the inhaled viral vector vaccine and the second in Shanghai, where more than 200 employees work on developing and manufacturing its mRNA jab. Yu said the group had built a manufacturing site in the southern coastal city to produce about 100mn doses of the mRNA vaccine annually, with the option of scaling back production if demand was weak.
Yu is pitching the mRNA jab to be part of a roster of booster shots to protect against new Covid strains, much like the annual flu jab. He estimated global annual revenues for the industry from Covid shots would be $5bn. “This is not a small market,” he said.
CanSino announced last month that it was exploring a listing in Switzerland, part of a growing trend of Chinese groups diversifying their investor base away from the US and China. Its Hong Kong-listed shares rose as much as 70 per cent when it announced approvals for its inhaled vaccine in November, but they have since fallen 55 per cent from that peak.
Additional reporting by Wang Xueqiao in Shanghai
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