Back on August 10th I discussed MedImmune’s intranasallive attenuated H1N1 influenza vaccine and the potential for a dose surplus. HHS had contracted for 12.8 million doses of the vaccine at a cost of $151 million, with MedImmune having the production capacity to make up to 200 million doses by March 2010. However, MedImmune had only sufficient Accusprays to fill approximately 40 million of these doses in the same timeframe.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has now ordered an additional 29 million doses of MedImmune’s H1N1 vaccine, which when added to the original 13 million dose order, accounts for all of the Accuspray delivery devices.
The total contract value is now about $447 million for the 42 million doses, or $10.65 a dose. HHS also ordered an additional 27.3 million doses of injectible inactivated vaccine from Sanofi Pastuer at a cost of $143.5 million. The Sanofi contract is now at $396 million for 75.3 million doses, or $5.30 per dose, a condsiderable discount to the MedImmune price.
MedImmune began developing the vaccine at the end of April, and about 3.4 million doses have been released by the FDA. They are expected to be shipped to states the first week in October.
MedImmune was in discussions with FDA to define a path for an alternative delivery device, possibly a dropper, to optimize utilization of the additional bulk vaccine capacity, which appears to be about 150 million doses. This entails working with FDA’s CBER to gain the regulatory approvals needed for an alternative delivery device. Since HHS only purchased the amount of H1N1 vaccine for which there are sufficient Accusprays, the fate of the excess capacity remains unknown.
[...] order was for $38 million of vaccine, suggesting a cost of $5 for each of the 7.6 million doses. As discussed in this blog on September 21st, this is in line with the $5.30 per dose paid for the 75.3 million doses contracted from Sanofi, [...]