COVID-19 Pandemic Has Altered the Flu Vaccine Production Landscape

An FDA expert panel on vaccines met on Friday to review strains to include in influenza vaccines for the next flu season and heard that the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the production landscape.

Will vaccine developers’ commitments to supply the U.S. with flu vaccines interfere with their ability to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines? The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) is concerned that they will.

“While we can’t speak to individual manufacturers commitments, the biopharmaceutical industry is concerned about the potential for unintended consequences of the ongoing and expanded use of priority and rated orders that is resulting in increased supply-chain constraints,” a PhRMA spokesperson told FDAnews. “These constraints include supplies common across certain manufacturers that could have unintended consequences for medicines outside of COVID-19,” the spokesperson said.

One large supplier of flu vaccines, Merck, which is helping to manufacture Johnson & Johnson’s newly authorized COVID-19 vaccine (DID, March 4), said that this work will not impact its ability to supply the U.S. with future flu vaccines.

Still, the pandemic has “thrown us into unchartered territory,” said Lauren Parker, an AstraZeneca virologist, who noted that during the 2020-2021 flu season demand for flu vaccines increased by 20 percent globally. Despite global supply-chain hurdles, the industry was able to meet its supply commitments and more than 500 million total doses were produced, she said.

Parker also discussed “the potential for some really amazing fast new technology … something that will help us in the event of an influenza pandemic,” noting how the swift response by vaccine developers to the coronavirus could fuel future innovation.

The traditional method of “using eggs as a platform to make a rapid response pandemic multivalent [vaccine] is so problematic,” she said. “If you have a big cell culture platform or like a plug-and-play mRNA or adenovirus vector platform … I’m hoping we’ll see some really exciting moves forward in the vaccine industry over … five to 10 years.” ― Jason Scott