SK bioscience COVID-19 vaccine, SkyCorvione Multi Inj. Provided by SK Bioscience
Production of SK Bioscience’s finished ‘SkyCoB One’ product, the ‘first domestic vaccine’, has been halted. This is because the demand in the market is insufficient as the vaccination rate has dropped significantly compared to foreign vaccines such as Pfizer and Modena. It has been about 3 months since the first batch was shipped on September 2nd.
SK Bioscience said in a public announcement on the 23rd, “Currently, our company’s ‘SkyCoB1’ is not producing additional finished products after the initial amount due to the low vaccination rate, and production and supply will resume at the request of the government in the future.”
As for the suspension of production, an official from SK Bioscience said, “SkyCoB1 will only be produced when the government orders it, but it is more accurate to say that we are currently waiting for an order from the government.” “Production of the finished product has been halted, but production of the undiluted solution continues,” he added. When market demand rises, finished products can be produced and supplied immediately.
SkyCorbyOne drew attention as a native vaccine by advocating securing so-called ‘vaccine sovereignty’. Former President Moon Jae-in personally visited SK Bioscience during his time in office and showed encouragement for domestic vaccine development, and President Yoon Seok-yeol also visited personally before taking office in late April as president elected. This was a glimpse of the government’s will to develop a domestic vaccine.
However, SkycorbyOne has shown a low vaccination rate since its release. According to the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 493 people received 1st to 4th vaccinations with SkyCorby1 vaccine on the 1st to 20th of this month. During the same period, 54,711 people were vaccinated by Pfizer.
The number of people who have been vaccinated is not expected to increase significantly. The Corona Vaccination Response Promotion Team announced 19 new winter additional vaccination plans on the same day, and announced that the 3rd and 4th vaccinations via SkyCobee1, Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax monovalent vaccines would be suspended from the 17th of r next month. It is a measure based on the fact that two to five times more neutralizing antibodies are produced than monovalent vaccines and that the supply of bivalent vaccines designed to respond to omicron mutations has become sufficient.
SkyCorvione is a genetically modified vaccine jointly developed by SK Biosciences and the Institute for Antigen Design (IPD) of the University of Washington, USA. It is called the first domestic vaccine as a domestic company leads the entire process from development to production. On 29 June, domestic product approval was obtained, and on 2 September, approximately 610,000 batches of the first batch were shipped.
SkyCoby1 was developed targeting the initial strain of the Corona virus 19, but according to the quarantine authorities, its effectiveness against the Omicron mutant virus has been proven through additional research. As a result of clinical trials, the antibody titer against BA.1 was approximately 1.5 times higher than existing vaccines. Based on these research results, it started to be used for the 3rd and 4th vaccinations from September 19th.
The government and SK Bioscience signed a pre-purchase contract for 10 million doses. There are also prospects that SkyCobee1 will be exported to third world countries like Africa at the level of India.
