What’s new: The head of the Chinese Association for Vaccines said the country plans to increase Covid-19 vaccine production capacity to 5 billion doses by the end of next year, as Beijing looks to ramp up its national inoculation drive.
The target revealed by Feng Duojia at a recent forum at Peking University is roughly 20 times the number of Chinese-made coronavirus vaccines administered at home or sent overseas to date, according to a Caixin calculation based on further data disclosed by Feng.
The background: China’s Covid-19 immunization campaign got off to a slow start due to capacity shortages that prevented large numbers of people from getting their jabs.
But the world’s most populous nation has rapidly scaled up the mass rollout in recent weeks as those bottlenecks have eased and local government officials have more strongly encouraged the public to seek vaccinations.
China has so far administered more than 130 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines and exported over 100 million to around 100 other countries, Feng said at the forum.
Contact reporter Matthew Walsh (matthewwalsh@caixin.com) and editor Lu Zhenhua (zhenhualu@caixin.com)
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