Taiwan can mass produce H7N9 vaccine

 2013/04/02 21:04:47Taipei, April 2 (CNA) A major local pharmaceutical company could produce up to 10 million doses of H7N9 avian flu vaccine in two months, the company said Tuesday following news of two deaths in China from the disease in recent days.Chan Chi-hsien, chairman of the Taichung-based Adimmune Corp., said that although there is no vaccine for H7N9 -- a new variant -- it is a "sibling" of the more commonly seen H1N1 variant, for which a vaccine already exists.Should there be a major outbreak, he said, it would take Adimmune just two months to produce between 5 million to 10 million doses of the vaccine.Chan was commenting on the ability of Taiwan to cope with the possible threat from the contagious disease that killed two people in Shanghai and left another critically ill in Anhui Province in central east China. (By Luo Hsiu-wen and Jay Chen)