(Yicai Global) Aug. 5 -- What is said to be world’s largest workshop for making inactivated coronavirus vaccines passed its biosafety inspection in China last month, paving the way for mass production.

The Beijing Biological Products Institute finished the facility on April 15 after two months of construction. It already had a license to make Covid-19 shots, China National Biotec Group said on its WeChat account today, and was jointly built with China National Pharmaceutical Group and China National Biotec.

It is the world’s first and largest production plant for inactivated Covid-19 vaccines, according to China National Pharmaceutical, which is also known as Sinopharm.

Beijing-based CNBG, the country’s top producer of vaccine and blood products, will be able to produce 220 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine once its two production bases are put into use. A plant at its Wuhan Biological Products Institute was completed on July 1.

CNBG has been developing Covid-19 vaccines since February. Two of its inactivated vaccines, which use killed virus particles as opposed to weakened live ones, were approved by the government for clinical trials on April 12, a world first.

Jointly developed with Sinovac Research and Development, the firms were given permission to conduct the first and second phases of clinical trials simultaneously. So far, non-blind results have shown the vaccines are safe and no serious adverse reactions have occurred, the company said on June 16.

The Beijing workshop provides a safe and reliable guarantee of vaccine mass production, potential research and development efficiency and production capacity for major infectious disease outbreaks in the future, Sinopharm said.

Editor: Peter Thomas