Chinese pharma company to set up COVID-19 vaccine plant in Hambantota
NEW DELHI – China and Sri Lanka are set to deepen their bilateral “vaccine diplomacy” with a leading Chinese pharma company preparing to set up a manufacturing plant to make anti-Covid jabs in President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s home district, Hambantota.
The new plant will be set up under an agreement that will allow Colombo to source nine million COVID-19 vaccine doses from the Chinese pharma company that sets it up, Sri Lankan ambassador to China, Palitha Kohona said.
A deal between Sri Lanka’s State Pharmaceutical Corporation (SPC), a State-owned enterprise, and China’s Sinovac Biotech is “fairly close to completion,” Kohana said.
“It will be set up in the dedicated pharmaceutical manufacturing zone [in Hambantota],” the Sri Lankan envoy said.
The Sinovac vaccine is one of the two Chinese jabs approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) under its “emergency-use listing”; the other being from state-owned Sinopharm.
The development comes months after India gifted 500,000 doses of the Indian-made version of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Colombo, which kicked off Sri Lanka’s vaccine roll-out in late January.
But in the first week of April, Sri Lanka had to temporarily suspend its vaccination program because of the delay in the supply of AZ jabs from India.
The Sino-Lanka vaccine arrangement was subsequently hastened after India stopped supplying vaccines to neighbouring countries to meet its domestic need for jabs following the devastating surge in local Covid-19 cases March onwards.
Kohona said it was originally India that was supposed to supply vaccines to Sri Lanka, but the plan fell through because of the COVID-19 crisis.
The SPC had approached the Chinese government to set up a vaccine plant in the zone earlier this year, given the rising demand for COVID-19 vaccines in Sri Lanka, Kohona said.
The SPC and Sinovac then finalized the deal and the specifics of the plant are currently being worked out.
– hindustantimes.com
The COVID-19 vaccine production line of Sinovac in Beijing, China – Peng Ziyang/Xinhua