One Day Sale! Sanofi Out of Vaccines

In one day alone, Sanofi Pasteur has booked orders for all of its 50 million doses of flu vaccine to be produced for the 2006-07 flu season. The company started taking orders for the vaccine on January 31. It had expected an increase in demand and therefore doubled its capacity for phone lines and online ordering systems and received more than 40,000 phone calls during the first 30 minutes it accepted orders, and more than 200,000 phone calls in the first eight hours. Total callers may have reached 400,000. It now has a wait list for the product.

Sanofi’s vaccine combats “regular” flu rather than the much feared avian flu, which is spreading from China through the Middle East and Eastern Europe and may result in an avian flu pandemic. The company is working on an experimental avian flu vaccine. Sanofi plans to produce all 50 million doses of its flu vaccine by the end of October.

Source: The Pocono Record, February 5, 2006.