COVID-19 vaccine production, to November 30th 2021

Our latest monthly update shows a further big slowdown in production by the two big Chinese vaccine firms, Sinovac and Sinopharm, pulling the global monthly total down from 1.4 billion doses to just below one billion. This puts China and India neck and neck as the world’s largest producing countries, with the European Union close behind and the US in fourth place with about half the monthly outputs of each of the top three. Depending on Chinese output during December, this puts the world on course by end-year to have produced somewhere between 10.5 billion and 11 billion doses since output began in November 2020. Oxford/AstraZeneca is now well ahead as the world’s largest producer, both on a monthly basis and in terms of total output. Although advanced-country booster demand is favouring the mRNA vaccines of Pfizer/BioNtech and Moderna, overall global demand is now strongest for Oxford/AstraZeneca.