Lekhim plans to register Sinovac vaccine against COVID-19 in Ukraine until Feb 5.

KYIV. Jan 13 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Lekhim group of pharmaceutical companies (Kyiv) plans to register in Ukraine a vaccine against coronavirus (COVID-19) disease produced by the Chinese company Sinovac Biotech until February 5, after the vaccine is registered in Brazil, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Lekhim group of pharmaceutical companies Valeriy Pechayev said at a press conference held at Interfax-Ukraine on Wednesday.

"The company received confirmation from the Health Ministry that when registering a vaccine in Brazil, Ukraine will register the vaccine as well. From January 25, Brazil will start immunization with the Sinovac vaccine, they should register the vaccine by January 25. As soon as registration in Brazil is completed, we will submit documents to the State Expert Center. I think we will register the vaccine before February 1-5," he said.

Pechayev said that Lekhim received from Sinovac a quota of 5 million doses of vaccines for sale in Ukraine in the first half of 2021, of which 1.913 million doses are planned to be purchased by the Health Ministry.

"Until February 15, Lekhim is receiving applications from enterprises for the supply of vaccines. Lekhim will check customers for compliance with the cool chain. The price for customers will be UAH 504 per one dose of vaccine. The profitability of the deal for Lekhim is 4-5%," he said.

In turn, Director of the Department for Development of the Lekhim group of pharmaceutical companies Mykhailo Rensky said that it is difficult to talk about the timing of vaccine supply, since they are prescribed only for a contract with the Health Ministry.

According to Head of the National Technical Group of Experts on Immunoprophylaxis, pediatric immunologist Fedir Lapiy, as clinical studies in Brazil have shown, the effectiveness of the vaccine to prevent mortality was 100%.

Lapiy said that there is no generalized report on clinical trials for any of the COVID-19 vaccines. "After clinical studies, manufacturers take data from different countries and combine them. There is no such data from any manufacturer yet," he said.

At the same time, Lapiy said that it is impossible to assess the effectiveness of the Russian vaccine against COVID-19, since it failed the third phase of clinical trials.

Sinovac Biotech is a Chinese vaccine producing company founded in Beijing in 2001 with a capacity of 300 to 500 million doses of six types of vaccines for humans and animals per year. Sinovac's main products are vaccines against hepatitis A (prequalified by the WHO) and B, influenza, mumps, chickenpox, which are registered and approved for vaccination in 34 countries around the world.

The Lekhim group of pharmaceutical companies was founded in 1992. It includes three enterprises: PJSC Technolog (Uman) (at the final stage of obtaining WHO prequalification), JSC Lekhim-Kharkiv (Kharkiv) and the management company JSC Lekhim (Kyiv).

CoronaVac is an inactivated vaccine. It uses a traditional vaccine mechanism in which a non-living virus that cannot replicate in human cells is used to activate the immune system. Phase 3 trials of the Chinese vaccine have already taken place in Brazil and Indonesia. Tests are ongoing in Turkey and Chile.

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