In a small meeting room on the third floor of the Innovation building of the San Joaquín Campus of the Catholic University, Sinovac’s vice president of International Business, Weining Meng, explains the Chinese pharmaceutical company’s decision to pause its plans to build a vaccine filling plant in Quilicura and a development center in Antofagasta. Furthermore, he affirms that investment in Colombia does not replace the eventual development of a plant in Chile.
In an interview conducted with translation from Mandarin Chinese, Weining Meng says that to date he has invested just over US$10 million in Chile and that Sinovac’s plans in the country are long-term. Likewise, the scientist, who has been part of the company for 16 years, questions the slowness in the vaccine registration processes carried out through the Institute of Public Health (ISP).
Despite that, his positive opinion of our country does not change. “I have always thought that Chile is one of the most economically developed countries in Latin America. Also, the streets are very clean,” he said.
Today during the morning the Minister of Economy, Nicolás Grau said that in Colombia Sinovac will have a joint venture in which the local government will have 51% and Sinovac 49%. Couldn’t that be done in Chile?
I’m not the best person to answer this question. Obviously, for Sinovac these types of collaborations are positive. We haven’t been in Chile for a long time and we don’t have that much experience. We are very willing to collaborate and talk about the topic if you are interested. Furthermore, the vaccine sector is very different from other industries. In the case of vaccines, it is associated with public safety. Especially in emerging times of pandemics, the availability of the vaccine is a very important aspect for the safety of the population.
Why couldn’t that be done in Chile?
We do not deny that this cannot be done in Chile. This could be done there, because both the Colombian government and Sinovac have realized the importance of vaccines for the safety of the population. Regarding Chile, we cannot answer that question. We are willing to communicate with different sectors, because we are new here. You can become convinced that this can be done, but we cannot (say) yes or no, because we are very new in Chile.
Is it true that Sinovac required the State of Chile to purchase a number of vaccines to carry out its plant in Quilicura?
We have never demanded anything, we have a long-term development plan in Chile. Before the pandemic, Sinovac realized that Chile has very strong research capabilities. For the same reason, we have established so many clinical trials compared to universities, such as, for example, the Catholic University and the University of Antofagasta.
We are very happy, because thanks to this type of collaboration we have obtained very good results and almost 100 publications in scientific journals. We have seen that both the population and the authorities have received the vaccine very positively and the country has its immunization plan very developed. It is one of the best in the area. Furthermore, Chile’s conditions are more stable compared to other Latin American countries. Human resources are also very stable. That is the reason why Sinovac wants to make its investments in Chile. But we, in any of these investments, always respect both commercial and scientific trends. For us, if we are going to build a research and development plant, we have to understand what we need the plant for. Both in the short and long term we must know what the research topic is that we are going to do in the plant. We do research and development to be able to manufacture a vaccine that can benefit the population. Therefore, research is closely intertwined with production. If we want to have production, we have to see that there is a demand in the market.
What condition does Sinovac propose to install a vaccine filling plant in Chile?
I already answered this question in the previous question. We will have to evaluate all the stages and factors when deciding if we are going to establish a filling plant.
Does Sinovac not pose conditions to be able to establish investments in Chile?
We are not saying that we need to have certain conditions for it, but certain factors can favor it. Today we are registering our products. Registration takes a long time and takes a long time at the ISP and is still in process. We are participating in tenders. Last year we didn’t win. We respect the Chilean market and this very free economic environment. In tenders there is no commitment to win, because this depends on many factors. What we try is to register as many products as possible to be able to participate in more tenders. This way we can guarantee a market for Chile. In this way, slowly over time, through the participation of these tenders, we can see that we have a fairly stable market and from there we already invest in the construction of the filling plants. This will be a bit of a long process.
Do you think that the decision to go to Colombia could have caused reputational damage for Sinovac in Chile?
Here it is relevant to clarify that the product we seek to develop in Chile and Colombia. Both are totally independent, except that we have paused the one in Chile for now and the one in Colombia is still ongoing. We have not left Chile and chosen Colombia. Latin America has more than 600 million people, but we do not see vaccine production plants. From Sinovac’s point of view, having plants in Chile and Colombia are not enough for the production of vaccines in Latin America. There can be several plants at the same time.
How much did the crime and garbage problems on the property in Quilicura influence the postponement of the plant?
Rather than pause, we have decreased the pace of progress. We are growing, but more slowly than we had planned two years ago, because during that period there was a demand for the Covid vaccine. If I continue advancing at this pace, I finish building the plant and I see that there is no market demand, why do I need that plant? That’s why we are moving more slowly. As we do so, we will have a market to satisfy. Right now, we only have the flu vaccine on file. The hepatitis A and chickenpox vaccines are still on the registry. A product without registering in Chile cannot be marketed.
Litter and crime will never be a positive thing. So, these factors do not support investments, but we cannot say that they are the critical factors that have made us slow down this process.
This is very slow?
Yes. Why am I going to advance so quickly if I don’t even have products to enter the market. This health registry is something very common. In other countries they usually take a long time. One year, two and even three years. Although this is a slow process in general, if progress could be made within its routine process, it will obviously accelerate Sinovac’s approach. It is a great support for us. Now I’ll explain an example: we are registering the Hepatitis A vaccine. This vaccine is not new in Chile. It’s not that no one has used it. We sell this vaccine to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the government purchases it through them. So for a vaccine that is already in use and that was manufactured at Sinovac, we will be two years old in February without registration.
Today we want to change the registry and it is no longer the distributor who sells the vaccine, but rather us directly. We consider this process more administrative than verification of effectiveness. It has already been evaluated and it won’t take that long.
Former president Eduardo Frei described the negotiation process between the current government and Sinovac as “disastrous.” Do you think there was a lack of support to improve the company’s plans?
We had very good conversations with the previous and current governments. Yesterday we had a meeting with the Ministers of Economy and Sciences. There we had very good communication. At that meeting we agreed to create a group to advance our project to build vaccine production plants in Quilicura and the development center. So, right now everything is going very well. We always look forward, now we see a quite optimistic path. We hope that everyone has the same objective and that Chile has a vaccine production plant for health sovereignty. We want to move together towards the same vision, instead of always looking backwards.
What does the innovation center in Antofagasta depend on?
Like any type of research center, everything depends on scientific development. For example, taking the case of the Antofagasta development plant that we proposed two years ago. At that time there was the pandemic and as you know, during that period Covid mutates and makes mutations from time to time. In that period it was very good to have a local laboratory in Chile to be able to treat the mutation. Right now, we are not saying that Covid is no longer important, obviously it is relevant, but it is not a priority. For this reason, at this moment if we decide to install an innovation and development center, the most important thing is that between Sinovac, the different institutes, the academic sector, we have to find out what the research topic is that affects the safety of the population and what let’s check it out. If we don’t have a topic or a research topic, why are we going to raise a plant right now.
2023-11-14 23:40:00
#Sinovac #postponed #vaccine #plant #left #Chile #chosen #Colombia #Tercera
