Pharma companies in China work at full capacity to ensure medical supply

Pharmaceutical companies in China are working at full steam to ensure ample anti-epidemic medical supply as the country continues to optimize COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control measures.

After China rolled out 10 new prevention and control measures in COVID-19 response on December 7, the market demands for antigen reagents as well as fever-reducing and cough-relieving medicines have been rapidly expanding amid surging COVID-19 infections.

In response, a pharmaceutical company in Haicang District of Xiamen, east China’s Fujian Province, has been working around the clock to ramp up production of antigen reagents to meet the growing market demand.

At present, the company’s production capacity of antigen test kits has hit 4 million units per day.

“Currently, four antigen reagents enterprises in Fujian Province have been approved and brought to market. Fast-track approval has been implemented for the resumption of production of medicine urgently needed in the market, such as acetaminophen, aspirin and ibuprofen, to further ensure the market supply,” said Zheng Chun, director of drug security in Fujian Provincial Medical Products Administration.

To meet the surging demand of fever patients, a factory of CSPC Pharmaceutical Group located in Shijiazhuang City, north China’s Hebei Province, has been renovated and expanded, and three production lines are now running at full capacity to make fever-reducing ibuprofen and acetaminophen tablets.  It has become the largest ibuprofen production base in Hebei Province.

“Our current production output has doubled compared with 20 days ago,” said Liu Shulin, production manager of CSPC Pharmaceutical Group.

Hebei Provincial government has implemented a coordination mechanism to secure the availability of important materials that are in short supply, introduced 12 measures to support key pharmaceutical enterprises to speed up production and ensure market supply, and dispatched factory-based personnel to 27 key enterprises to provide targeted assistance and help ramp up the production capacity.