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The dearth of flu shots this year is not associated with the drugmakers ramping up for the coronavirus vaccine, the head of vaccines at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) — a British multinational pharmaceutical company — said on Wednesday.
Speaking at the Financial Times’ virtual healthcare conference, Roger Conner said that his company, the world’s largest vaccine maker by sales, supplied the maximum possible doses of seasonal influenza set out for this year.
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The shortage of the flu vaccine is due to the growing demand for flu shots in some European cities. This has also raised fears of a possible “twindemic” of flu and coronavirus.
The company stated that it has supplied more than 85 million flu vaccine doses worldwide, with 50 million doses for the United States alone, Reuters reported.
“The reason why there’s a constraint on flu this year is just an unprecedented demand against the normal capacity. I don’t think it’s actually driven by the fact that coronavirus (vaccine) manufacturing is eating that capacity in any way,” Conner further added.
He stressed that the flu vaccine manufacturing process is a part of separate production and is not even remotely related to coronavirus vaccine production.
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