S.Africa's Aspen aims to sharply increase COVID-19 vaccine capacity

GQEBERHA, South Africa - South Africa's Aspen Pharmacare is aiming to ramp up its COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing capacity to 1.3 billion doses a year by February 2024, up from a current annual output of around 250 million doses, the company's CEO told Reuters on Monday.

Aspen is doing the final stages of manufacturing for Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine under a so-called "fill and finish" deal, but CEO Stephen Saad said in an interview that the companies were close to announcing a broader deal for Aspen to produce J&J's COVID-19 shot under licence.

"We have got an absolute commitment to 700 million doses till February 2023 ... within a year after that, we could get (to) 1.3 billion doses," Saad said on the sidelines of the opening of Aspen's anaesthetic manufacturing facility at Gqeberha in eastern South Africa.