Category Archives: Influenza A Virus H1N1 StrainHealth and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she is urging school superintendents around the country to spend the summer preparing for the possibility of turning schools into swine flu vaccine clinics this fall. “If you think about vaccinating kids, schools are the logical place,”
Analysts note that the pandemic couldn’t have come at a better time for Glaxo, one of the world’s largest vaccine makers. Generics have been steadily eating into the company’s margins, leaving Glaxo looking for new products to make up the shortfall.
Faced with the first World Health Organization (WHO) declared pandemic in four decades, health officials arou world are rushing to order huge stock-piles of the H1N1 (Swine) Fl vaccine in what is shaping up as a multibillion-dollar windfall for the world’s biggest manufacturers.
Novartis is one of five big manufacturers preparing swine flu vaccines for the U.S. market, a CDC official says. Dr. Pascale Wortley, the CDC’s pandemic-vaccine coordinator, says that by October the U.S. expects to have between 40 million and 160 million doses of vaccine ready for use. That could mean that this fall, U.S. school children may be expected to get a seasonal flu shot as well as a double dose of swine flu vaccine.
An additional $884 million in funding has been allocated to buy more ingredients an antigen and an adjuvant for swine flu vaccines. This is in addition to the $1 billion The Department of Health and Human Services committed to fighting the Swine Flu in May.
The swine flu case of 1976 forever reduced confidence in public health pronouncements from the government and helped foster cynicism about federal policy makers that continues to this day.
San Diego-based Vical, a firm who is developing an H1N1 vaccine under an agreement with the U.S. Navy saw company shares climb 45 cents, to $2.65 on positive clinical trial news this week. Vical researches and develops biopharmaceutical products based on our patented DNA delivery technologies for the prevention and treatment of serious or life-threatening diseases. Vical’s stock shot up 20 percent on the news that their swine flu jab sailed through an animal study with positive results. Vical’s H1N1 vaccine is now ready for a human study — marching into the clinic in record time.
Around the world, vaccine manufactures are rushing new swine flu vaccines into clinic trials and booking pre-orders from worried Public Health officials, while epidemiologists are still puzzling out how the new flu works and why many young people without any health complications are often hit the hardest by H1N1.
Since 2004, HHS has contracted with manufacturers that currently hold U.S. licenses for flu vaccine as part of the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza. In May 2009, HHS issued new orders on these contracts to produce a bulk supply of vaccine antigen and adjuvant and to produce pilot (also called investigational) lots of a 2009 H1N1 vaccine.
If the stockpiling entity decides to retain expired or soon-to-expire Tamiflu and Relenza, it should be maintained and monitored under the product’s labeled storage conditions. These organizations are also urged to contact the FDA’s Emergency Operations Center with information on how much Tamiflu and Relenza in their stockpiles is at or approaching expiration.
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