Well there is not a direct comment indicating this, however, there are key US dept statements talking about working towards this and if you look at the dates and then notice Glaxo's announcement of increased production, it's a bit of a "1 + 1 = 2" situation. With these new US orders, it simply underlines this - it is happening. As PortableAlpha stated, the main thing to slow this down till now was actually lack not enough GSK production capacity. If GSK had been doing their job properly, production would have been there well before now. You can see why Biota went after them in court - they were obviously not doing a great job selling the product.
17th June 2009 APPENDIX B H1N1 COUNTERMEASURES STRATEGY AND DECISION-MAKING FORUM DETAILED REPORT PANDEMIC INFLUENZA WORKING GROUP (PIWG) NATIONAL BIODEFENSE SCIENCE BOARD http://www.hhs.gov/aspr/conferences/nbsb/nbsb-h1n1forum-sum-090617.pdf
"With its current equipment, GSK could produce 20 million treatment courses of Rotacap/Rotahaler in 2009. With more investment in tools and starting materials, it could produce 50 million courses by mid-2010. The maximum capacity would be approximately 100 million courses per year using GSK facilities only. Unlike the Rotadisk/Diskhaler, other manufacturers could produce the Rotacap/Rotahaler. If both presentations were produced, GSK could potentially provide 60 million treatment courses this year, and a maximum of 190 million courses per year".
"And the reason we went with Zanamivir was the previous acknowledgment that the virus had already started to change for H1N1, and then we started to see isolated incidents of resistance to Oseltamivir with these 2009 H1N1 viruses. So, ultimately, we wanted to move from an 80-20 split to a 50-50, and so the next procurement we have will be moving toward that. We will not get there this year, because there's not enough capacity in production to allow that to happen. So, basically, again we're buying what we'll be able to produce in the United States at this time".
"GSK has contacted governments around the world to ascertain demand for Relenza and has put in place a series of measures to raise production levels. As a result, GSK now expects to increase its annual production capacity of Relenza to 190 million treatment courses by the end of 2009. This represents a threefold increase to GSKs previous maximum capacity of 60 million treatment courses."
Whatever discussions that were off the record or behind closed doors, GSK would not agree to ramp up production like this unless they had assurances of orders - I think the above references indicate this.
Tooluck, hopefully enough guidance here.
I'm pushing my luck for a Sunday morning - time for me to go out with the family - catch up later :-)
BTA Price at posting:
$2.01 Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held
