British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca PLC plans to file for approval in February to manufacture and sell its novel coronavirus vaccine in Japan, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told a news conference Thursday that the company had told the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry it would produce enough doses in Japan to cover more than 45 million people.
AstraZeneca developed the vaccine in collaboration with the University of Oxford. The vaccine is given twice to each person. In Britain and India, the vaccine has been administered to medical workers and elderly people. In Japan, a clinical trial was conducted last year to vaccinate about 250 people aged 18 or older, and data is currently being analyzed.
The government made a contract with AstraZeneca to purchase vaccines for 60 million people, 15 million of which will be supplied by the company by the end of March. According to sources, AstraZeneca plans to produce most of the vaccines used in Japan domestically. Companies including JCR Pharmaceuticals Co. and Daiichi Sankyo Co. will be in charge of the production of raw materials and commercialization of the vaccine.
In December, U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc. was the first to file for approval of a coronavirus vaccine with the health ministry. The Japanese government plans to purchase vaccines from AstraZeneca, Pfizer and U.S. biotechnology firm Moderna Inc. for 157 million people.
Vaccines from the three companies are currently manufactured overseas, but the volume and timing of imports are uncertain due to growing global demand and delays in production.
All the vaccines contain a portion of the genetic material of the synthesized coronavirus. The feature of the two U.S. companies' vaccines is that the genetic material is wrapped in a lipid membrane, whereas the AstraZeneca vaccine's genetic material is incorporated into another virus. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is stored at minus 75 C and Moderna's vaccine at minus 20 C, while the AstraZeneca vaccine can be stored at 2 C to 8 C, which makes it easier to handle.
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