An unexpected shortage of rabies vaccine has been worrying the Chinese public. Media outlets have reported a severe lack of rabies vaccine in several provinces across China in the past few months, coinciding with a surge in cases of people being hurt by dogs and cats. 

Changchun Changsheng Life Sciences, China's second-biggest rabies vaccine maker. (Photo: VCG)

Shijiazhuang No.5 Hospital in North China's Hebei Province confirmed with the Global Times on Monday that there was a shortage of rabies vaccine in May and June as vaccine producers stopped production in January and February due to the COVID-19 outbreak, but supply is slowly catching up.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Jinan, East China's Shandong Province, gave a similar message, adding that the shortage is nationwide, and will "probably last longer." 

Stricter vaccine supervision system is another reason for the shortage, according to some industry analysts, as some major producers have had their licenses suspended after the scandal over the faulty rabies vaccine produced by Changchun Changsheng Life Sciences in 2018.

"These factors have undeniably affected the production of the rabies vaccine as there was an apparent decline in supply in January and February. But the gap has rapidly narrowed after production recovered from March," Tao Lina, a Shanghai-based vaccine expert, told the Global Times on Monday, trying to ease public concerns.

Liaoning Chengda Co, Ltd, a vaccine producer, told China's financial news site eeo.com.cn that they recovered production on March 2 and produced 800,000 doses per month from January to June, basically equal to the same period in 2019.  

Increasing demand may be another cause, according to Tao. "As people all stayed at home during the epidemic, spending more time with pets, there would be an increase of attacks of pets on people," he said.

Tao called for stricter management of pets and expanding vaccination of pets to protect people from rabies, which is the fifth leading cause of death from infectious disease in China following AIDS, tuberculosis and Hepatitis A and B. 

The production value of rabies vaccine in China is approximately 4 billion yuan ($0.6 billion), according to eeo.com.

In 2019, 276 people died from rabies in China. The figure was 3,300 in 2007. 

China used to follow India with more than 2,000 deaths for rabies on average reported each year for the past decade, but the country has been enhancing pet management in recent years, requiring registration and vaccination. 

According to an industry report, the demand for the rabies vaccine in China will remain high until 70 percent of pets in the country are vaccinated. Current vaccination ratio is 10-40 percent.  

In 2019, the number of pet cats and dogs in China reached 99.15 million, up 8.4 percent year-on-year, statistics showed.