[Featured Stock] SK Bioscience Plummets 7% Amid Temporary Halt in COVID-19 Vaccine Production

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Seon-ae] On the 23rd, SK Bioscience's stock price has fallen more than 7% since the early trading hours. This is interpreted as a deterioration in investor sentiment following reports that the production of the first domestically produced COVID-19 vaccine is being temporarily suspended.

At 9:49 AM, SK Bioscience was trading at 80,600 KRW, down 7.04% from the previous trading day. The price had dropped to as low as 79,700 KRW in early trading.

According to the pharmaceutical industry, SK Bioscience has reportedly temporarily suspended production of the COVID-19 vaccine ‘Skycovione’. After shipping an initial batch of 600,000 doses following the government's decision to pre-purchase 10 million doses, production was temporarily halted due to the lack of additional orders.

Skycovione is the first domestically produced COVID-19 vaccine targeting low-income countries such as those in Africa and Latin America. It received conditional approval from the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in July, but approval has not been granted after applying for inclusion in the World Health Organization (WHO) Emergency Use Listing.

On this day, SK Bioscience stated through a public disclosure, “Currently, our ‘Skycovione’ is not producing additional finished products after the initial batch due to low vaccination rates, and production and supply will resume upon future government requests.” They added, “We are proceeding with global approval procedures for overseas sales.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.