Declaration Of H1N1 Pandemic To Accelerate H1N1 Vaccine Production

The WHO’s decision Thursday to declare H1N1 (swine) flu a pandemic will “speed the production of a vaccine against the new virus,” however scientists continue to caution that “it will be fall at the earliest before the first doses are available,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

“Scientists have encountered some problems in paving the way for such a vaccine. The H1N1 virus grows more slowly in eggs than the seasonal flu virus does, so it has taken longer than expected to prepare the seed stocks of virus that manufacturers will use to start production. … Preliminary tests also suggest that higher than normal amounts of killed virus will be required to produce the necessary immune response, which could also slow the manufacturing process,” the newspaper writes.

According to WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, it will likely be September before the first doses of an H1N1 vaccine become available “and even then, ‘there will be limited supply of vaccine,’ she said. ‘The challenge to the world will be to look at who should get the vaccine and, within a country, which groups get the vaccine’” (Maugh, Los Angeles Times, 6/12).

Novartis AG, announced Friday it “has successfully produced a first batch of swine flu vaccine weeks ahead of expectations,” the AP/Wall Street Journal reports (AP/Wall Street Journal, 6/12). Rather than using the traditional method for vaccine production that requires adapting a virus strain to grow in eggs, Novartis instead used “cell-based manufacturing technology,” shaving “weeks off the time required to begin vaccine production,” the company said. The company “will start clinical trials in July and expects to be able to ramp up manufacture rapidly,” according to Reuters (Reid, Reuters, 6/12).

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