Flu Vaccine Production Stepped Up

Companies that make flu vaccines have been cajoled into making several million more doses and speeding up production, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said Friday.

He said he had persuaded the three companies that make the vaccine to increase production from 72 million doses to 85 million this year, in part to ease the strain on a public health system battling anxiety over the recent spate of anthrax attacks.

Robert Essner, president and chief executive of American Home Products Corp., one maker of the flu vaccine, said his company may be able to increase production by 10% to 15%.

Essner and Thompson said during a telephone briefing that companies use chicken eggs to make the vaccine, and often produce a little extra to make sure they have enough. Using the extra material might allow for additional doses this year.

“By December there should be plenty of vaccine to go around,” Dr. Walter Orenstein, head of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine program, said in the briefing.

Influenza kills 20,000 Americans in an average year, and up to 40,000 when the strain is particularly nasty. The vaccine is reformulated every year to match the most common strain.

Last year and this year production was below demand, in part because one company that used to make the vaccine stopped doing so.

Health officials asked that healthier and younger people wait until November or December to get their vaccines so that the more vulnerable, such as those over 65, pregnant women and people with certain health problems, could get their vaccines first.

The early symptoms of anthrax strongly resemble those of the flu: achy muscles, headache, dry cough, fever and sore throat. Health officials said people fearful they have anthrax could besiege hospital emergency rooms when the flu season starts.