Company to produce additional flu vaccine

WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON -- The Gaithersburg, Md.-based biotech company MedImmune Inc. will resume production of its nasal-spray influenza vaccine and deliver an additional million doses by early January, the company and federal officials announced Thursday.
The company had previously announced it would make 1 million more doses from components left over from this season's original production run of 1.1 million. With the additional amount announced Thursday, MedImmune's total offering this season will be about 3 million doses.
The nation's total flu vaccine supply will reach about 61 million doses this season, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said Thursday night in a telephone news conference.
The government hopes to get about 2 million more doses from Canadian suppliers and is negotiating with three European countries to try to get unused vaccine. Lester Crawford, acting head of the Food and Drug Administration, said one of the countries was France but would not name the others.
The U.S. supply of flu vaccine this winter had been expected to be about 100 million doses. Early this month, however, one of two suppliers of the traditional injectable vaccine, Chiron Corp., announced that the 48 million doses slated for U.S. distributors had been impounded by British regulators because of bacterial contamination of some lots made at its plant outside Liverpool.