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Federal Government, Vaccine Maker Finally Sign Deal to Make H5N1 Flu Vaccine

Posted on: Monday, 28 November 2005, 18:00 CST

By HELEN BRANSWELL

TORONTO (CP) - The federal government and Canada's flu vaccine manufacturer have finally inked a deal that will see ID Biomedical produce a prototype H5N1 flu vaccine for clinical testing in this country - nine months after funding for the work was announced in the last federal budget, The Canadian Press has learned.

Officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada won't take possession of the vaccine for at least a year, putting Canada well behind a number of other countries in efforts to test and license a vaccine against the H5N1 avian flu strain which experts fear may trigger the next influenza pandemic.

The deal was to be announced Monday in what is expected to be the dying hours of the current Parliament.

Negotiations between the federal government and ID Biomedical began last spring. At the time, federal officials believed a deal could be drawn up relatively quickly. Delivery of the prototype vaccine was expected in time to run clinical trials in the late summer or early fall of 2006.

Instead the talks have been protracted, with the company looking for a better deal should it ever be called upon to produce pandemic flu vaccine for Canada.

Federal officials had hoped the deal would be done in time to announce before last month's international meeting of health ministers on pandemic influenza in Ottawa. But that deadline too came and went without an agreement.

The contract will see the federal government contribute $21.1 million towards the cost of construction of a new, high biosecurity facility in ID Biomedical's Ste-Foy, Que., vaccine plant. Because of the dangerous nature of the H5N1 virus, the vaccine can't be made in the regular facility.

The company has said repeatedly that it would take them a year to make the vaccine once the contract is signed: eight months to build the special high containment facility, two months to have it licensed and two more to make the vaccine.

The prototype vaccine project has a dual purpose: to give ID Biomedical experience making a vaccine with the H5N1 virus and to put an H5N1 vaccine through the regulatory process. Federal authorities have said having a licensed H5N1 vaccine could cut months off the delivery time in a pandemic, if the virus goes on to become a pandemic strain.

Source: Canadian Press

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