Development
US Biotech Tycoon Opens Africa's First End-to-End Covid-19 Jab Plant Source: AFP
US BIOTECH BILLIONAIRE Patrick Soon-Shiong on Wednesday, 19th January, opened a plant in Cape Town that will be the first in Africa to produce Covid-19 vaccines from start to finish. The factory should churn out its first vials of second-generation coronavirus vaccine "within the year" and produce a billion doses annually by 2025, said SoonShiong. The plant will be South Africa's third Covid vaccine manufacturing facility but the first in the continent to make the formula across every stage, rather than producing it Scissor ceremony: President Cyril Ramaphosa, left, joins biotech from semi-finished batches. tycoon Patrick Soon-Shiong in launching the vaccine hub Africa currently manufactures © GIANLUIGI GUERCIA less than one percent of all vaccines administered on the continent, according to the World Health Organization "one of the momentous moments of my life -- this (WHO). is a homecoming." South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, He made a fortune by inventing a cancer drug speaking at the inaugural event, hailed the plant as and then founded NantWorks, a Californiaa sign of African self-reliance. based startup in healthcare, biotech and artificial "Africa should no longer be the last in line to intelligence, in 2007. access vaccines against pandemics, African Production at the state-of-the-art vaccine should no longer go cap in hand to the Western manufacturing campus will be a collaborative world begging and begging for vaccines," said effort between NantWorks, South African Ramaphosa. research institutions and four local universities. "We will stand on our own," he vowed. "We have now developed this SN (spike nucleic) He thanked Soon-Shiong, a South African- T-cell vaccine, a second-generation vaccine, and born and now United States-based doctor- we want to manufacture this in Africa, for Africa, turned-entrepreneur -- for returning "home" to and export it to the world," said Soon-Shiong. invest in vaccine production. www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/us-biotechBorn in South Africa to Chinese parents and now tycoon-opens-africa-s-first-end-to-end-covid-19a US citizen, the billionaire said the launch was jab-plant/ar-AASVWwQ 37
January-February 2022
DAWN
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