Staff members seal the vaccines into plastic packaging. Photo: Li Hao/GT

Leading Chinese vaccine producers are racking up efforts to make COVID-19 vaccines and they are ready for large-scale production as the country tries to meet domestic demand for mass vaccination, Chinese officials said on Tuesday.

Beijing Biological Products Institute under Sinopharm's subsidiary China National Biotec Group (CNBG) said it expects to reach a production capacity of one billion doses of the inactivated COVID-19 vaccine in 2021.

Sinopharm was granted market approval attached with conditions for China's first domestically produced COVID-19 vaccine on December 31.

Two other top vaccine candidates, the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products under CNBG and Sinovac Life Sciences Co. (Sinovac) are also making every effort to increase manufacturing capacity, working across the New Year's Day holiday to meet vaccine demand, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said on Tuesday.

With expended production capacity China is able to meet the domestic demand for mass vaccination, said the ministry, adding that a total of 18 domestic plants are now working to maximize their production capacity.

The ministry said it has set up a special team to track and schedule the production capacity for key enterprises on a week-by-week basis. .

Wang Jiangping, vice-minister of MIIT, said that it is necessary to speed up production capacity while the quality and safety of vaccines are going to be rigidly enforced.