EU shores up pandemic defences with 478m flu vaccine deal
The European Union has snapped up advanced manufacturing capacity for at least 478 million doses of pandemic flu vaccine, surging ahead in the race to prepare for a possible bird flu outbreak in humans.
According to data from the health analytics firm Airfinity, the EU now has signed agreements with seven manufacturers to reserve vaccines – including a new deal unveiled last week with CSL Seqirus for a further 27m doses.
Although governments including Canada and the UK have reserved more doses per person, the EU has the largest and most diverse supply chain for a possible influenza pandemic.
As reported in the Lancet last week, the recent emergence of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus infections in dairy cows and humans in the US has 'raised alarms regarding the potential for a pandemic'.
'Over 995 dairy cow herds and at least 70 humans have been affected, including cases of severe disease and the first reported H5N1-related death in the U.S'.
This emerging threat has caused health authorities across the globe to quietly start planning for a possible spillover to humans, with a clear focus on vaccine supply.
The shots the EU now has on standby do not constitute a stockpile. Rather than amassing a store of ready-to-use vaccines which protect against known strains of bird flu, the bloc has bet big on reserving access to outbreak-specific shots.
These would be produced after a pandemic was declared and the exact strain of the virus was known – giving the best chance of the jabs being efficacious in humans.
Richard Bennett, lead analyst at Airfinity, said the EU was also hedging its bets by doing deals with seven different firms.
'This diversification reduces the risk of supply disruption if one manufacturer encounters production issues, and prevents monopolising capacity from any single supplier,' he said.
Other countries have also set about reserving access to as-yet-unmade vaccines. Germany has secured production capacity or 400 million doses, under a framework that would also distribute manufactured jabs to the wider European Union.
Vaccine resilience and flexibility
Meanwhile the UK and Canada have reserved 100m and 80m doses respectively. Although this equates to more shots per person than the EU has access to (1.5 per capita for Britain, two for Canada and one for the EU), the supply chains are less diverse. Canada is reliant on GSK, while the UK has a single deal with CSL Seqirus, according to Airfinity.
Unlike the other countries included in the analysis, the US does not have enough doses to cover its entire population. Mr Bennet said this is unsurprising, 'given previous [US] demand for pandemic vaccines'.
During the H1N1 'swine flu' outbreak in 2009, national vaccine coverage was just 27 per cent, though this jumped to 69.5 per cent during the coronavirus pandemic.
Still, the superpower has 250m doses of pandemic flu shots reserved with CSL Seqirus and Sanofi, plus a stockpile of 20m shots against known strains of bird flu already circulating.
'Most countries depend on a handful of manufacturers for pandemic flu vaccines. Seven companies produce over 85 per of global supply, leaving national stockpiles vulnerable to geopolitical tensions, production delays, or supply chain shocks,' the Airfinity analysis warned.
'The EU has reduced reliance on single suppliers by securing contracts with multiple manufacturers, creating a more resilient and flexible vaccine procurement strategy during emergencies.'
Production delays and vaccine nationalism
The coronavirus pandemic highlighted the threat of vaccine nationalism, production delays and export restrictions. India's export bans, for instance, stalled the rollout of shots from Covax, which sought to buy immunisations for developing countries.
The US also imposed limits on the export of vaccines and the critical equipment and materials needed to make them, while the EU threatened to block the export of AstraZeneca shots made for the UK government in the Netherlands.
Ray Longstaff, director for Pandemic and Outbreak Preparedness and Response at CSL Seqirus, said the company has designed its manufacturing network and contracts to ensure minimum disruption in the face of these sorts of threats.
'In our agreements, we have supplied safeguards and comprehensive information about how we will not only meet the timelines … but also the kind of preparedness measures that we put in place to protect supply chains,' he said. 'It's something that we take very seriously.'
The company – which has manufacturing sites in the UK, US and Australia – is one of the world's largest producers of seasonal flu shots. It also has a bird flu vaccine programme, plus a separate initiative to create pandemic-specific vaccines. If the WHO declared a pandemic, all manufacturing would switch to solely respond to the given outbreak.
The pharmaceutical firm's latest deal reserves 27.5m pandemic flu doses for 17 participating EU member states, which would be manufactured at the CSL Seqirus site in Liverpool using an egg-based production method. The company now has deals to supply pandemic shots to more than 30 governments worldwide, including the UK.
Mr Longstaff said he could not discuss specifics of the contracts – which include reservation fees that are invested in 'maintaining readiness and preparedness' – and downplayed the ramifications of potential tensions between governments in a pandemic scenario.
He also stressed that the company would support lower income countries through the WHO's Pandemic Influenza Preparedness (PIP) framework. Agreed after the 2009 swine flu outbreak, this requires companies to donate 10 per cent of their pandemic influenza shots, in real time.
This principle has also been incorporated into the new WHO pandemic treaty, set to be approved at the World Health Assembly in Geneva later this month, in an attempt to ensure that wealthy countries are not the only ones who have access to medical countermeasures in the event of an outbreak.
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