Syringes of a vaccine for COVID-19 and models depicting the coronavirus are displayed at the Sinovac factory in Beijing on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2020. Indonesia, one of the first nations to bet its Covid-19 vaccination campaign on Sinovac Biotech Ltd., was about to announce a stunning development, one that would help vindicate a shot that’s been shrouded in controversy for months. Over in Beijing, though, the company’s chief executive officer was unaware.
Sinovac has already shipped some 380 million doses, more than AstraZeneca Plc and second only to Pfizer Inc. worldwide. But unlike those companies — and even Russia’s Sputnik shot — it still hasn’t published any data in an academic journal, the gold standard experts use to assess a vaccine. But the confusing numbers – and other negative publicity around the shot that the company did little to deflect – had an impact, fueling criticism in Brazil of the vaccine by President Jair Bolsonaro and undermining faith in Hong Kong, where Pfizer and BioNTech SE’s shot is instead favored. Despite its roster of global orders, CoronaVac is yet to be endorsed by the World Health Organization, which has asked for more detailed information, as have regulators in Singapore.
FILE PHOTO: Sinovac Biotech CEO Yin Weidong speaks to journalists at an event at the site where the company is producing their potential COVID-19 vaccine CoronaVac on September 24, 2020 during a media tour in Beijing, China. Yin built Sinovac from the ground up over the last 20 years, but until now the company has gotten most of its $510 million in annual revenue from within China, and hasn’t had to grapple with the sort of scrutiny seen in the west. Sinovac is more concerned about ensuring safety and rolling out vaccines to the most people possible, as that is key to determining whether countries can emerge from the pandemic, Yin said.