Clinical trials will help determine who many doses are needed
meeting of the Council of Ministers will consider a proposal to establish a multi-million euro fund for advance purchases of the H1N1 vaccine, Health Minister Christos Patsallides confirmed to the Cyprus Mail yesterday.
Patsallides said that the figure of €8 million reported in the press yesterday is “an approximate figure” designed to allow his Ministry to open negotiations with potential suppliers in good faith. He said that an accurate indication of the total number of doses required will only be established once the target groups for vaccination have been defined in line with EU guidelines and mapped out against population statistics, to cover a certain percentage of our population.
Once that indicative figure is set, there still remains the question of whether each person to be vaccinated will need one or two doses. This question will only be answered during clinical trials due to be started by pharmaceutical companies this month. Finally, the price at which Cyprus will buy the vaccine will only be known once negotiations begin. Patsallides said: “Cyprus is a small market, so our negotiating power is different to that of a country with a population of 60 million.”
French pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis started vaccine production in the US and France in mid-June. The company said at the time that the required dosage will be established during clinical trials on humans scheduled to be carried out in the northern hemisphere by the end of the summer.
Several other companies including Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline and Solvay are also involved in the effort to produce H1N1 vaccines to meet the demand for hundreds of millions of doses ordered in advance by several governments. Novartis has said that their vaccine will enter clinical trials this month, and should have the vaccine ready in September or October.
A number of EU countries have already signed or are preparing to sign advance purchase agreements with pharmaceutical companies for H1N1 vaccines. The UK, France, Belgium and Finland have between them placed orders with GlaxoSmithKline for close to 120 million doses of the vaccine. Ireland has finalised advance purchase agreements with two manufacturers for the purchase of 7.7 million doses.
Portugal’s Health Ministry said on Tuesday that it had decided to establish a reserve of H1N1 flu vaccines for 30 percent of its estimated 10.7 million population and is negotiating with several pharmaceutical companies over the planned purchase.
[SIDEBAR 1]
Confirmed cases at 201
THIRTY-four new cases of the H1N1 virus were confirmed yesterday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the government-controlled areas to 201. Of the new cases, 17 were Cypriots and the rest foreigners.
According to figures provided by the Health Ministry, the state lab had so far completed the examination of a total of 416 samples.
The Ministry said in its official statement that 100 of the 201 confirmed cases have already recovered.
[SIDEBAR 2]
EU calls for more seasonal flu jabs
THE European Commission (EC) decided on Wednesday to recommend to EU countries that they ensure that 75 per cent of their elderly population and 75 per cent of people with some specific underlying health problems are vaccinated every year against seasonal flu. The EC said that this target should be achieved by 2015 at the latest, and that each country should report annually on the progress they make with vaccination coverage until 2015, and then every 3 years.
Vaccination coverage rates in older people vary considerably in Europe, ranging from 2 per cent in Lithuania to 80 per cent in the Netherlands. The Health Ministry’s Medical Service told the Cyprus Mail that in Cyprus, 60,000-70,000 people get a flu jab annually from state healthcare providers. Taken together with those obtained privately, the total number is “at least 100,000”, equivalent to around 13 per cent of the total population in the south of the island. On the basis of these figures, Cyprus may already be close to meeting the EU target for 2015.
