The Beijing-based vaccine producer Sinovac Biotech, the first in the world to develop SARS vaccine, said Friday it has made preparations to produce human-use bird flu vaccine in mass quantity.

Sinovac has installed a special production line for the human-use bird flu vaccine, said Yin Weidong. general manager of the company, which is working with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention to research bird flu human vaccine.

"We have applied for human clinical trials for the vaccine with the Chinese State Food and Drug Administration and the vaccine can be put into production once the clinical trials complete," said Yin, adding the price of the vaccine could be lower than the commonly-used flu vaccines.

Chinese scientists have developed a bird flue vaccine for human use and will carry out clinical tests in days.

"Tests show that the vaccine is highly safe," said Yin.

Founded in 2001, Sinovac, known in China as Beijing Kexing Bioproducts Limited Company, focuses on manufacturing and marketing human-use vaccines and related products for infectious diseases such as Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B, influenza and SARS.

The company was designated to cooperate with the state disease control and prevention center to carry out the research and development for human-use bird flu vaccine, to be used for preventing the disease among humans, since the epidemic among birds was first found in March 2004.

"We get the virus samples from the lab of the influenza center under the World Health Organization and the research is going on well," said Yin.

"If the bird flu virus mutates, we can develop new vaccines in four months," said Yin.

Millions of chickens, ducks, geese and other poultry have been culled after bird flu outbreaks were reported in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Hunan, Hubei, and Anhui provinces this year.

China's health authorities have confirmed on Wednesday the first two human infection cases of bird flu in the country, and enhanced efforts to prevent and control the epidemic.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao inspected the workshops of bird flu vaccine and medicine for human use in Sinovac on Thursday and called for new progress on the research and development of the bird flu vaccine.

Source: Xinhua