The bird-flu vaccine at the expense of the flu shot

Production for the influenza vaccine may have to be curtailed to produce a bird-flu vaccine. Is it worth it?

At Sanofi, Mr. Bernal says making bird-flu vaccine for a potential threat would cut into the company’s production capacity for vaccines for seasonal flu, which kills about 36,000 people annually in the U.S. alone. By contrast, the H5N1 strain of bird flu, the one that worries health authorities most, has infected at least 273 people world-wide, killing 166 of them, mostly in Asia, since the virus re-emerged in late 2003, according to the WHO.

Mr. Bernal says global vaccine-production capacity for seasonal influenza already is limited to an estimated 350 million doses a year, of which Sanofi Pasteur produces about half. “The real public-health need today is for seasonal flu,” he says. “You either produce [vaccines for] seasonal flu or H5N1.” As a result, the H5N1 vaccine “is not a vaccine that we want to sell to the public,” Mr. Bernal says. “We don’t have a marketing strategy for this product.” A committee of outside advisers to the FDA is scheduled to meet Feb. 27 to make recommendations on the safety and effectiveness of Sanofi’s H5N1 vaccine.