June 14, 2007 
HHS Steps Up Domestic Influenza Vaccine Production

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said today it has awarded contracts to two U.S. manufacturers to retrofit their influenza vaccine manufacturing facilities and set up "warm-base" operations in which the factories will be active year-round. The grants to Sanofi Pasteur, who makes an inactivated egg-based vaccine, and MedImmune, who makes a live, attenuated vaccine also based on eggs, will expand U.S. pandemic vaccine manufacturing capacity by 16 percent and will afford year-round production of pre-pandemic influenza vaccines for the national stockpile, the HHS said. A pandemic preparedness plan issued in 2005 calls for stockpiling enough vaccine to vaccinate 20 million persons in critical workforce positions at the onset of a pandemic, with "surge" manufacturing capacity capable of providing vaccine for another 300 million persons within six months of the beginning of a pandemic.