A Chinese drug watchdog has imposed a fine and asset seizure worth CNY9.1bn ($1.3bn) on Changsheng Bio-Technology following two major vaccine scandals.
This amount includes a confiscation of the company’s CNY1.89bn revenue from vaccine sales.
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The authority also imposed a ban on 14 of Changsheng Bio-Technology’s executives from working in the pharmaceutical industry, Xinhua News Agency reported.
In addition, several national and provincial-level officials were fired in relation to the scandals.
In July, Changsheng Bio-Technology was accused of releasing several thousand batches of faulty rabies vaccines, including some to be given to babies and children. It was also accused of fabricating data.
Although authorities claim that the rabies vaccines did not enter the market, the case led to wide public outrage due to repeated safety scandals in the pharmaceutical sector. The scandal also caused public fears about the use of domestically manufactured drugs.
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By GlobalDataState media Xinhua reported: “Violations included blending different batches of vaccine fluid, falsifying dates of production and using expired fluid to produce some of the batches.”
The regulators fined Changsheng Bio-Technology $507,843 for this initial batch of faulty vaccines.
The second scandal occurred in November, where Chinese regulators found around 250,000 diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus (DPT) vaccines manufactured by the firm to be defective. This increased to at least 500,000 in August when a second batch was also found to be faulty.
