Local biopharmaceutical firm Adimmune Corp (國光生技) made public on Friday its intention to become the only supplier in Taiwan of a human vaccine against A(H1N1), a new influenza strain that broke out in Mexico in April.
Adimmune spokesman Kao Sheng-kai (高勝凱) made the declaration after a tender held by the Department of Health (DOH) earlier in the day for 5 million doses of the vaccine failed because only Adimmune submitted a bid.
The law governing governmental tenders requires that at least three companies submit bids for a tender to be valid.
SECOND ROUND
The DOH, however, will open a second tender next week that according to the Government Procurement Act (政府採購法) will not require a minimum number of bidders or a preset price range, Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Lin Ding (林頂) said.
Kao said that his company, also known as Kuo Kwang Biotechnology Co, intends to vie for the business and become the government’s main supplier of the vaccine.
Foreign suppliers, already unable to meet demand in international markets and unlikely to be able to comply with the government’s targeted October delivery date, have not shown any desire to participate in tenders for the (A)H1N1 vaccine.
PRICE
Kao said the price of the vaccine for swine flu, which in recent months has spread around the world, has been on the rise because of increasing demand, including the US requirement of some 600 million doses.
Using the case of Novartis AG as an example, Kao said that the Switzerland-based drug company sold the vaccine at between US$8 and US$10 per dose to early buyers, but that this has recently increased to more than US$10 per dose.
Adimmune general manager Ignatius Wei (魏逸之) said the company’s price for the vaccine would be below US$10 per dose, but Kao said on Friday that the final price would be decided by the company’s board of directors.
CONDITIONS
The DOH said the government had planned to purchase the vaccine at a price of NT$200 per dose, but it would be allowed to raise its purchase price in the second tender.
The only private human vaccine manufacturing company in Taiwan said that it has purchased 8 million chicken eggs to produce the human vaccine against (A)H1N1 using chicken embryos.
Kao indicated that the company has begun the process of producing more than 1.5 doses from one egg, and he estimated Adimmune could produce between 7.5 million and 10 million doses of the vaccine with its available egg stocks.
DOSES
The DOH would purchase 10 million doses of the (A)H1N1 virus vaccine, 5 million doses of seasonal flu vaccine, and 900,000 doses of the antiviral drug Relenza this year to strengthen its anti-pandemic arsenal, Lin said.
So far, the DOH has secured 2.28 million doses of vaccine against seasonal flu, including 400,000 doses for children, Lin said.
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
Taiwanese manufacturers have a chance to play a key role in the humanoid robot supply chain, Tongtai Machine and Tool Co (東台精機) chairman Yen Jui-hsiung (嚴瑞雄) said yesterday. That is because Taiwanese companies are capable of making key parts needed for humanoid robots to move, such as harmonic drives and planetary gearboxes, Yen said. This ability to produce these key elements could help Taiwanese manufacturers “become part of the US supply chain,” he added. Yen made the remarks a day after Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) are jointly
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) expects its addressable market to grow by a low single-digit percentage this year, lower than the overall foundry industry’s 15 percent expansion and the global semiconductor industry’s 10 percent growth, the contract chipmaker said yesterday after reporting the worst profit in four-and-a-half years in the fourth quarter of last year. Growth would be fueled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, a moderate recovery in consumer electronics and an increase in semiconductor content, UMC said. “UMC’s goal is to outgrow our addressable market while maintaining our structural profitability,” UMC copresident Jason Wang (王石) told an online earnings
RSS