(Reuters) -SK Bioscience Co Ltd chief executive Jaeyong Ahn said in a Financial Times interview that it is unlikely that the vaccine maker can supply COVID-19 vaccines to China amid its recent outbreak due to Beijing’s “national pride”.
Ahn said that it was “unrealistic” to supply COVID vaccines to China, as the country insists on using its own, the newspaper quoted him as saying.
SK Bioscience is monitoring whether any COVID variants are emerging from China, the report said.
On Sunday, China’s National Healthcare Security Administration (NHSA) did not include Pfizer Inc’s Paxlovid in an update to its list of medicines covered by basic medical insurance schemes, saying that the U.S. firm quoted a high price for the COVID-19 drug.
Chinese hospitals are under intense pressure after the government abandoned its “zero-COVID” policy last month, sending infections soaring.
The abrupt changes have exposed many of China’s 1.4 billion population to the virus for the first time, triggering an infection wave that is overwhelming some hospitals, emptying pharmacy shelves of medication and causing international alarm.
(Reporting by Rishabh Jaiswal in Bengaluru; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
