The European Union (EU) announced on Tuesday that it had concluded a contract allowing it to purchase, on behalf of member states, up to 665,000 doses of a vaccine preventing the transmission of avian flu to humans. This announcement comes as several cases have recently been reported in the United States, Mexico and Australia.
The European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), set up during the Covid-19 pandemic, concluded a “framework contract” to acquire these doses within four years from the British laboratory Seqirus, a market with an option for 40 million additional doses.
Fifteen member states of the EU and the European Economic Area (the Twenty-Seven plus Norway, Iceland and Liechenstein) are participating in this joint purchase, the European Commission indicated in a press release. France and Finland are part of it, but not Germany, according to the European executive, which has not communicated the detailed list.
These doses will be intended for “people most exposed” to the potential transmission of avian flu by birds or animals, such as poultry farm workers and veterinarians, the press release specifies.
The vaccine from the Seqirus laboratory is the only one currently authorized in the EU against influenza caused in humans by H5 strains of the avian influenza virus.
The framework contract signed by the Commission will allow each participating State “to order vaccines according to their needs”, in order to “prevent the spread or the appearance of potential outbreaks”. First shipments are already “being prepared” to Finland, and shipments “to other countries” will follow.
Several people have been infected with the “A H5N1” avian flu virus in the United States in connection with an epidemic of this virus in cows, according to American health authorities
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday called for strengthening the global detection network for H5N1, which has shown it can infect a large number of animal species. But no human-to-human infections have been noted.
The WHO also reported in early June the death of the first human case of avian flu linked to another strain, H5N2, in Mexico on April 24, a “multifactorial” death according to it.
