Via STAT, Helen Branswell writes: WHO makes plans for reduced doses of Ebola vacccine if needed. Excerpt:
The World Health Organization is drawing up plans to use reduced doses of Ebola vaccine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the event that supplies in the long-running outbreak run short, according to the head of the WHO’s health emergencies programs.
There is currently no shortage of the vaccine — half a million doses are available, Dr. Mike Ryan said in an interview with STAT. If the outbreak continues at the current pace, he said, that will be enough to see the effort through to early next year, when the manufacturer, Merck, will have new stock available.
But if the outbreak were to deteriorate substantially, it’s conceivable supplies of the experimental vaccine would be tapped out later this year, Ryan said, stressing the WHO has to plan for that possibility: “We have to be responsible.”
“There are some epidemiologic models that could see us running out of vaccine, should the situation worsen,” Ryan said. “And it would have to worsen fairly significantly; it’s not just a small worsening.”
In late May, the amount of vaccine given to each person in the DRC was already halved. The decision was made, with the approval of government officials, after the Food and Drug Administration informed the WHO it was using a little more than twice as much vaccine per person as was used in the clinical trial that proved the vaccine was protective. (That trial was conducted in Guinea during the West African Ebola outbreak.)
That has eased the pressure somewhat on the management of supplies, but it remains important for health officials and Merck to plan for contingencies. It takes about a year to make a batch of this vaccine and fresh stock from the company will not be available until January.
