WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- The federal government's flu-pandemic preparedness plan may bode well for flu-vaccine manufacturers, and might particularly lift sales of the only inhaled flu vaccine currently on the market.
The Department of Health and Human Services' flu plan calls for increasing the number of people who get annual flu shots to spur expansion of the production capacity of companies that make flu drugs.
If there is a need for mass vaccinations in the event of a pandemic, the infrastructure will already be in place, the government's logic goes.
That could be an opportunity for Medimmune, based in Gaithersburg, Md., to expand its market share for its intranasal vaccine Flumist.
The inhaled treatment has been available for two years but still hasn't become profitable for the company, partly because it's more expensive than injectable flu shots and it's only indicated for healthy people between the ages of 5-49.
In recent years, that patient population has generally been left out of the federal government's vaccine recommendations, with vaccine shortages necessitating a focus on the immune-compromised, the young and the elderly.
In fact, usually less than 20 percent of healthy people ages 18 to 49 get an annual flu shot, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"One of the things we're trying to do with Flumist is to make the case for why, in addition to high-risk individuals, healthy younger individuals need to get vaccinated," Jeffrey Stoddard, a pediatrician and senior director of medical affairs at Medimmune, told United Press International.
Stoddard said expanding the groups the federal government recommends for vaccination would stimulate vaccine production and help prepare the nation for a global outbreak of flu.
Most worrisome currently is a strain of bird flu circulating in Asia and other countries called H5N1.
"If the recommendations are expanded, manufactures like ourselves will absolutely ramp up our production and produce more vaccine and we will all be ready for pandemic when it arrives," he said.
"We'd better start vaccinating more people, including healthy people," Stoddard added. "If we cannot adequately control epidemic influenza that occurs every year, how are we ever going to be ready for a pandemic?" Stoddard said Medimmune is seeking expanded use for Flumist to include children under the age of 5 and as young as 6 months. He added that the company recently entered into an agreement with the National Institutes of Health to produce and test versions of Flumist that could help ward off potential pandemic influenza viruses, including H5N1, he added.
Dr. John Lebbos, an analyst and director of infectious disease at Decision Resources in Waltham, Mass., told UPI the HHS plan would benefit all flu-vaccine manufacturers, including Chiron, Aventis Pasteur and GlaxoSmithKline.
"It will definitely be a really good thing for flu-vaccine manufacturers," Lebbos said. "Across the board, one would expect increasing awareness to affect both vaccines and anti-virals," he said, adding that he expected there would be higher vaccination rates this flu season because of the attention given a possible pandemic of H5N1.
