Sanofi Pasteur has a multi-year contract with the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of its pandemic program, and will receive a payment of $192.5 million booked in the second quarter of 2008 for acceptance of the bulk vaccine lot.
This acceptance represents the US government’s latest effort to diversify the vaccine stockpile program to include new strains of the H5N1 virus. The antigen lot will protect against a clade 2.2 strain of H5N1 virus (A/Barheaded goose/Qinghai Lake/01/2005) that is particularly troubling because it is the first to be identified in an outbreak of migratory birds, which have the potential to spread the virus across continents.