Text/ Zhao Tianyu Xin Ying
Editor / Wang Xiao
Photo/ Unsplash
One dose is less than 20 yuan, or even free. This is the current national purchase price for covid-19 inactivated vaccines.
This huge campaign of free vaccination for all, the cost of procurement and vaccination is mainly borne by the health insurance fund and the finance.
On April 2, 2022, Caijing Health learned from the National Medical Insurance Bureau that since the free vaccination of the new crown vaccine, the National Medical Insurance Bureau first reduced the purchase price of the new crown inactivated vaccine to no more than 90 yuan / dose, and then continued to promote the continuous price reduction of enterprises, successively reducing the price to about 40 yuan / dose and 20 yuan / dose.
At the same time, some vaccine manufacturers provide 600 million doses of vaccines free of charge.
Recently, the National Medical Insurance Bureau has negotiated with enterprises again, and the newly agreed price has been reduced to a lower level. That is, it is lower than 20 yuan per dose.
China has received 3.2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines, costing more than 120 billion yuan. The head of the relevant department of the National Medical Insurance Bureau said that this cost is shared by the medical insurance fund and the finance, and the cost of vaccine expenditure is within the affordable range of the medical insurance fund.
Who can share this cake of more than 120 billion yuan?
Enterprises have entered the era of thin profits
Since February 2021, the National Health Insurance Bureau has temporarily undertaken to negotiate vaccine purchase prices with COVID-19 vaccine companies.
Subsequently, the price of the new crown vaccine was reduced step by step, and the production enterprises entered the era of thin profits.
Kexing Zhongwei's covid-19 inactivated vaccine has been conditionally launched since its conditional launch in February 2021, and the cumulative global vaccination volume has exceeded 2.3 billion doses in the past two years.
On March 31, 2022, China Biopharmaceutical (01177. HK) released its 2021 annual report, and "associates and joint ventures" contributed $13.6 billion to the company's profits. And Kexing Zhongwei is one of the associated companies, China Biopharmaceutical holds 15.03% of the shares, and the annual report says that "the performance of individual associated companies is bright".
According to the above proportions, the profitability of Kexing Zhongwei in 2021 is 90 billion yuan; and in the first half of 2021, this profit level is about 50 billion yuan, which shows that the pace of profitability in the second half of the year has slowed down.
Photo/pixabay
The news from the National Medical Insurance Bureau also proves that the profitability of the new crown vaccine is getting thinner and thinner. As early as January 14, 2022, the national medical security work conference has revealed the news, "the reinforcing needles that have been vaccinated are mainly provided free of charge by enterprises."
At that time, the booster needle was a homologous vaccine (i.e., the same technology as the basic immune and the booster needle), so the booster needle market was occupied by three inactivated vaccines and one adenovirus vector vaccine. Among them, the inactivated vaccine comes from Sinopharm Zhongsheng Beijing Institute, Sinopharm Zhongsheng Wuhan Institute, kexing Zhongwei, and the adenovirus vector vaccine comes from CanSino.
The profit level of CanSino in 2021, although the thickness is not as good as that of Kexing Zhongwei, has finally achieved a turnaround.
Consino (688185. SH) annual report shows that in 2021, the operating income was 4.3 billion yuan, and the net profit attributable to the shareholders of the listed company was 1.914 billion yuan. The reason is that the company's new crown adenovirus vector vaccine is listed at home and abroad or urgently used, and the commercialization of the product has had a positive impact on the company's operating income and various profit indicators.
In 2021, 70% of CanSino's vaccine revenue will come from abroad, and this part of the income will be 3.057 billion yuan, mainly from mexico, Pakistan and other overseas countries.
In Chinese mainland, there are three technical routes for COVID-19 vaccines currently in use: inactivated vaccines, adenovirus vector vaccines, and recombinant protein vaccines. A person close to the Medical Insurance Bureau told Finance and Economics That the three technical routes of the new crown vaccine are continuing to reduce prices at the same time.
The revenue of vaccine companies in 2021, and another one has been announced, from Fosun Pharma (600196. SH）。 The company is a Chinese partner in an overseas mRNA vaccine that has been administered in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and has received more than 20 million doses as of the end of February 2022. The sales scale of this vaccine will exceed 1 billion yuan in 2021.
On March 23, 2022, at Fosun Pharma's annual performance communication meeting, Wu Yifang, chairman and CEO of Fosun Pharma, told Caijing Health that vaccination in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan is currently progressing as usual, and its share in Hong Kong is still very high, and the appointment rate in Taiwan is also very high.
However, "Chinese mainland is still in the process of approval, and there is no more news to share with everyone. Wu Yifang said.
The fourth stitch is coming?
As of March 31, 2022, China has completed the full vaccination of COVID-19, accounting for 88.11% of the total population of the country, and the number of people who have completed the intensive injection, reaching 694.936 million people.
According to the data of the seventh national census in 2020, there are 1.443 billion people in the country. Nearly half of the people who have completed boosted immunization have been completed.
A total of seven companies were vaccinated with intensive injections: inactivated vaccines from Sinopharm Zhongsheng Beijing Institute, Sinopharm Zhongsheng Wuhan Institute, Kexing Zhongwei, Kangtai Biology, and Institute of Biology of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences; adenovirus vector vaccine, from CanSino; recombinant protein vaccine, from Zhifeilong Kema, a subsidiary of Zhifei Biologics.
Seeing the dilution of profits from the new crown vaccine on the market, there are still some corporate products that have not yet been listed and are still continuing to advance.
Faster progress is the Clover (02197. HK) recombinant protein vaccine, which is expected to complete the registration application of the State Food and Drug Administration in mid-2022.
Ruike Bio (02179. HK) was listed on Hong Kong stocks at the end of March, and the company's recombinant protein COVID-19 vaccine launched a Phase I clinical trial in New Zealand in June 2021. There are also Companies such as Chengdu Wesker Bio and Si Microbiology, and the news of the research and development of the new crown vaccine has also been reported.
Photo/Pexels
Eison's pickup recombinant protein COVID-19 vaccine, which was completed in the UAE phase I clinical trial in late March 2022, is a heterologous booster in people who have received two doses of inactivated vaccine (i.e., basic immunity and booster needles from different technical routes). In the view of Zhang Yi, chairman of Yisheng Biologics, the next opportunity for the new crown vaccine lies in solving the problem of breakthrough infection, that is, preventing infection after receiving the new crown vaccine.
People's judgments on the future of the COVID-19 vaccine are mixed.
"If after the new crown vaccine, people are gradually free from infection, then the market space in the future is not large; however, if the new crown virus continues to mutate, people are difficult to prevent after vaccination, then the research on the new crown vaccine still needs to continue, and the ceiling has not yet been seen." Zhang Yi told Finance and Economics Health that preventing infection is the key.
Under the impact of the global response to the Omiljung variant, countries have begun to receive a fourth dose of the new crown vaccine.
On March 29, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized Pfizer and Moderna to provide a fourth dose of vaccination for people over the age of 50, both of which are making mRNA vaccines. The fourth and third needles need to be separated by at least four months.
At the same time, people over the age of 12 who are immunocompromised, such as having received an organ transplant, or have some immune impairment, can also receive a fourth injection.
The US FDA calls the fourth dose of the new crown vaccine "second dose of booster injection", which is currently limited to Pfizer and Moderna.
A clinical study in Israel has confirmed that people aged 18 years and older received two doses of basic immunity, one Pfizer booster, and then four months later, one dose of Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, and these people had higher neutralizing antibody levels after two weeks than those who had been given five months after the third dose. Neutralizing antibody levels here include the Delta variant and the Opichron variant.
At present, no new security issues have been found in the fourth needle.
Inner volume, to use new technology breakthrough
"The gross profit of the domestic new crown vaccine has basically not made money. The latter enterprises are still doing it, and I can't understand it. A brokerage source told "Finance and Economics Health".
In the view of the above-mentioned brokers, many companies are still in the development of new crown vaccines and need to be financed, so they must always do it. But homogeneous new crown vaccines, in fact, there is no need to waste time and resources to do.
Whether at home or abroad, the revenue of COVID-19 vaccine companies is less than expected, which is a signal to some extent.
Guojin Securities analyzed in the research report that the sales revenue of CanSino's new crown vaccine was lower than expected. The company's COVID-19 vaccine is entering the World Health Organization's (WHO) Emergency Use List (EUL) process, which is lower than originally expected in early 2022, and out of prudent consideration, the brokerage's current revenue and profit forecasts for the company do not consider the increase in overseas sales that EUL will bring.
Pfizer, the big winner of covid-19 vaccines, expects mRNA vaccine sales of $32 billion in 2022, which is lower than Wall Street's expectations, and analysts expect $34 billion.
On Feb. 8, Pfizer's CFO Frank D'Amelio said, "I need to remind that the potential bright side of this year is relatively small compared to the new COVID-19 vaccine in 2021, when very few people have been vaccinated." ”
Scott Rosenstein, a healthcare consultant at the consultancy Eurasia Group, believes that while many countries are getting booster injections, covid-19 vaccines in most parts of the world are in greater supply than demand.
According to analyst firm Airfinity Ltd, more than 9 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine may be produced globally in 2022, but by 2023 and beyond, demand for COVID-19 vaccines is likely to decline at a rate of about 2.2 billion to 4.4 billion doses per year.
With the adjustment period of the new crown vaccine, can China achieve the upgrading of vaccine technology?
Wu Yifang mentioned at the above-mentioned communication meeting that in the process of the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, global biomedical companies have responded quickly, and they have also seen that China has advantages, such as the rapid development of inactivated covid-19 vaccines; at the same time, there are gaps in cutting-edge technologies, such as the research and development of domestic mRNA vaccines.
The domestic new crown mRNA vaccine under development comes from Aibo Biologics and Watson Biologics. Currently, this vaccine is in the phase III clinical study phase.
Wu Yifang said that from an objective and rational point of view, there is still a gap between the current level of development of China's biomedical industry and the most advanced multinational enterprises, and it is still necessary to learn and catch up. Seeing the gap and strengthening confidence, it is actually very beneficial to the rapid development of biomedicine.
Chinese companies that have already made a profit on covid-19 vaccines have their own plans for the future development path.
Coshing Holdings Biotechnology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Coshing Zhongwei, invested in the construction of a vaccine research and development center and a vaccine production plant in Chile, and in February announced the joint construction of a biosafety level III (P3) laboratory with the University of Chinese of Hong Kong to conduct research in the fields of infectious diseases, immunology and microbiology.
CanSino has cooperated with foreign countries to develop mRNA vaccine technology, and at the same time, the inhaled neocorrectrovirus vector vaccine has completed clinical phase I and II trials, and meningococcal polysaccharide conjugate vaccine has been listed.
One trick is not so smart in this era. Stay sensitive to technology and keep evolving to avoid getting caught up in the inner volume.
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