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| SKY Covione, a COVID-19 vaccine developed by SK bioscience. Korea Times file |
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| SK bioscience CEO Ahn Jae-yong. Korea Times file |
SK bioscience, a biotech affiliate of SK Group, said Wednesday that it has temporarily halted the production of SKY Covione, a COVID-19 vaccine, due to plummeting demand amid a declining number of infections.
Further compounding the halt in production is a more stringent set of approval requirements of global health and drug agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Exports to developing countries including those in Africa will take more time than initially projected, due to tightened scrutiny in line with the global community inching closer to the endemic phase of the years-long COVID-19 pandemic.
"We have halted the production of the vaccine except for key ingredients needed to meet demands upon approval of international health agencies," a SK bioscience official said.
The decision was due chiefly to the oversupply of the vaccine brought on by the absence of government purchase orders.
The government has yet to make any orders after it bought 610,000 doses, only a fraction of the 10 million doses it earlier said it would buy, according to the firm.
The firm maintains that purchase order contracts signed with the government have not been terminated and therefore remain valid.
SKY Covione was developed jointly by the SK affiliate and the Institute for Protein Design (IPD) under the University of Washington.
The product development was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a private foundation, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a global coalition launched at Davos in 2017.
The SK affiliate sought to supply locally produced vaccines to the global market through the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) initiative, a worldwide program set up to enable equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, upon making it onto the World Health Organization (WHO) Emergency Use List.
The SK affiliate said the product will have a competitive edge in the global market, in need of a steady and stable supply of the key vaccine in the months to come.
However, it failed to dispel criticism that the vaccine is not as effective against the Omicron variant.
