China Focus: Medical firms strive to ensure epidemic supplies

TIANJIN, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- Early each morning, Chang Hong arrives at a preparation workshop operated by a pharmaceutical enterprise in north China's Tianjin Municipality. She works with more than 20 colleagues for over 10 hours to produce medicines for the home treatment of COVID-19.

Chang is a frontline worker at Tianjin Pharmaceutical Da Ren Tang Group Co., Ltd. She and her colleagues have been at their posts for nearly a month to cope with the increasing demand for medicines.

"The production line is running 24 hours a day. We have confidence that we can provide medicines for the people as soon as possible," Chang said.

"Since December, we have been accelerating the organization of production schedules for our affiliated manufacturers," said Zhang Yu, the company's chief production officer.

With advanced traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) preparation technology, the pharmaceutical company is increasing its output of COVID-19 medicines, especially several TCM varieties.

"With more workers stationed in the factory and the implementation of closed-loop production, our daily output since December has climbed to 150 percent of our output in the same period last year," Zhang noted.

The company's employees have been given a new task -- packaging and distributing "COVID-19 prevention health kits," which are being distributed free of charge by the Tianjin municipal government to key groups, such as elderly residents over 65 years of age.

"More than 100 cadres and workers signed up and completed the task of preparing 150,000 health kits in one night," Zhang said. So far, two batches totaling 200,000 health kits have been delivered, and a third batch is being prepared.

Tianjin is also making all-out efforts to ensure the supply of other pandemic materials.

As a pandemic materials supplier, Naton Medical Protective Equipment (Tianjin) Co., Ltd. produces millions of masks every day, which are shipped from Tianjin to hospitals and pharmacies across the country.

"Masks protect the people's health, so we are striving to ensure their smooth production," said Bian Huiming, who has been working on the company's mask production line for nearly three years.

In recent days, Bian has been busy coordinating workforces and preparing materials to keep the production lines operational. "Naton's six major mask production workshops have all been put into use, with 116 production lines running at full capacity 24 hours a day," Bian said.

"There are currently more than 2,000 production workers at the company, our peak employment level since the start of this year," said Li Wenyang, the company's senior director of production.

The sufficient supply of raw materials and the recovery of logistics are helping the company ship masks across the country at an accelerated pace.

"In addition to ensuring the supply of COVID-19 prevention supplies in Beijing and Tianjin, we are also taking advantage of e-commerce to help our products meet the needs of people in more areas of the country," Li said.

Thanks to these efforts, the shortage of COVID-19 prevention supplies has been gradually eased in pharmacies and hospitals in Tianjin. Tianjin authorities say the municipality will prompt pharmaceutical companies to respond in a timely manner to ensure the supply of medicines and consumables in line with the epidemic situation. ■