WHO Advisers: No Large-Scale H1N1 Vaccine Manufacturing Yet
For now, companies should keep cranking out vaccine against seasonal flu, while research continues into the best way to make a vaccine against the new strain of H1N1 flu.
That was the conclusion of a group of WHO advisers, who wrote that it would be “premature to recommend that commercial-scale production of influenza A (H1N1) vaccine should start immediately.”
Here’s their report.
The report suggests that much of the seasonal vaccine planned for production this year has yet to come off the assembly lines; of 480 million expected doses, 350 million will be available by June 30 and 430 million will be available by July 31.
What’s more, manufacturers may need a month or two to determine how to maximize yield from strains of H1N1 used to produce vaccines. The report also called for close scrutiny of the safety profile of the vaccine, and specified the need to track Guillan Barré syndrome, the disorder that was associated with the swine-flu vaccine in the 1970s, among people who contract H1N1.
As many as 4.9 billion doses of H1N1 vaccine could be produced over a 12-month period once manufacturing begins, the advisers said. But that estimate would require a yield comparable with that of […]
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