Biomedical stocks recover from impact of scandal

Calm returned to China’s vaccine sector on the stock market, after a recent scandal involving substandard rabies and other vaccines produced by Changchun Changsheng Life Sciences caused investor panic, wiping 161 billion yuan ($23.6 billion) from domestic biomedical stocks’ value through Monday.

Shares of Changchun Changsheng, which was recently exposed as having been involved in the illegal production of rabies vaccines for human use, continued to slump on Tuesday, falling 9.96 percent to 11.75 yuan.

But stocks for most vaccine manufacturers recovered on Tuesday after biomedical and vaccine companies rushed to issue public statements on a variety of platforms, trying to calm customers and investors and disassociate themselves from Changchun Changsheng and the broader vaccine scandal.

Tian Guangqiang, assistant research fellow with the National Institute of International Strategy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the incident should push domestic consumers to choose imported vaccines.

“I think after the incident, domestic vaccine makers would be pushed to learn advanced technologies from overseas countries and even cooperate with overseas firms in research and development, production and inspection,” Tian told the Global Times.

Li Tianquan, co-founder of domestic healthcare big data platform yaozh.com, said that the incident should push the government to increase penalties for domestic medical companies that don’t follow the proper manufacturing procedures.

He said that the government might also be pushed to launch more detailed rules to standardize vaccine research and development as well as production.