who to declar pandemic wed/worrying signs, page-7

I ripped this from Dow Jones Newswires

It's going to be a significant scale operation for GSK, and it's going to be a very important part of our operations for the rest of the year," he said without giving sales forecasts.

The firm is also ramping up production for relenza, a drug that can be used to treat the H1N1 flu, and will be capable of producing about 60 million packs a year in eight weeks.

"Governments are really keen to build more stockpiles of relenza than they have in the past for various reasons," Witty said. "We're also talking to regulators about a second form or delivery system for relenza, which will also massively increase capacity."

Witty says the new method for production will involve a simpler device and allow GlaxoSmithKline to increase production capacity by another 100 million packs and make it easier to license the drug to other firms. He added that the firm remains open to licensing the technology to other generic drugmakers, but said the company has not been approached by any interested parties recently.

-By Se Young Lee, Dow Jones Newswires; +65 6415 4155; [email protected]