SK Bio "hasn't manufactured SKYCovione after first batch"

Signs a supply agreement for 10 million doses with the government... supplied the first batch of 600,000 doses

Around 3,700 people vaccinated with SKYCovione...”Will resume production at the request of the government”

SK Bioscience

On the 23rd, SK Bioscience publicly announced that the manufacture and supply of its self-developed COVID-19 vaccine ‘SKYCovione’ have currently been discontinued.

 

SK Bioscience received marketing authorization for SKYCovione in Korea in July this year.

 

In September, the company supplied an initial batch of 60 thousand doses of the 10 million doses that the government pre-purchased through an agreement.

 

However, further manufacture and supply of the vaccine have been discontinued.

 

One reason is that the overall vaccination rate has fallen with the slowdown of the COVID-19 outbreak and the increasing number of people with immunity.

 

According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, the cumulative number of people vaccinated with SKYCovione in Korea as of November 22nd was only 3,787.

 

In other words, only 0.6% of the 600,000 doses supplied to the government were used.

 

Its performance is sluggish compared to its competitors.

 

The government has been recommending winter season COVID-19 vaccinations from October 11.

 

People can choose from vaccines including SKYCovione, Pfizer’s BA1·BA.4/5-adapted vaccines, Moderna’s BA.1-adapted vaccine, and Novavax’s winter season vaccine.

 

Among these, a cumulative 1,530,332 people received vaccination with Moderna’s vaccine.

 

754,058 received Pfizer’s vaccine, and 23,156 received Novavax’s vaccine.

 

In the same period, only 1,759 people opted to receive SKYCovione.

 

Due to such circumstances, SK Bioscience plans to continue producing the vaccine solution and wait for additional orders from the government.

 

An official from SK Bioscience said, “Basically, the finished vaccine product is manufactured when requested by the government.

 

We are not producing additional finished vaccines because we have not received additional requests after the initial supply." “Apart from the finished product, we have been manufacturing the vaccine solution.

 

We will resume production and supply the request of the government in the future” The official added, “We are also undergoing global approval processes.” In July, the company applied for a Conditional Marketing Authorization (CMA) of SKYCovione (SKYCovion™ in Europe) to the Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA), and then submitted an Emergency Use Listing (EUL) application to the World Health Organization in September.

 

However, the applications have not been approved yet.