By Deena Beasley
Sept 19 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursdaysigned an executive order aimed at spurring the development ofbetter vaccines to protect against seasonal influenza as well asa potential pandemic flu outbreak.
The order does not allocate additional funding for now, butcalls for an evaluation of current flu vaccine manufacturingabilities and a task force report including cost estimates,administration officials said on a call with reporters.
Each year the seasonal flu, which can kill tens of thousandsof Americans, costs the United States about $50 billion,including lost productivity, one administration official said. Aserious flu pandemic would push those costs to between $1.8billion and $3.8 billion, he said.
Manufacturers such as GlaxoSmithKline Plc and SanofiSA make millions of doses of flu vaccine for the U.S.market alone, growing the virus in chicken eggs. Usually thedoses, which protect against strains that experts predicted theprevious February, are ready in time and in sufficient quantityfor the winter flu season.
But if the strain that appears during flu season was not theone experts forecast, the vaccines might not work. Theappearance of H1N1 swine flu in 2009-2010 took experts bysurprise, and the flu was already on its second wave before avaccine was ready; an estimated 61 million people in the U.S.got swine flu and thousands died.
The Department of Health and Human Services will coordinategovernment efforts to modernize influenza vaccine production.The focus will be on recombinant technologies to quickly producereliable vaccines as well as "universal" vaccines that wouldelicit immunity against parts of the virus that do not changefrom year to year.(Reporting By Deena BeasleyEditing by Sonya Hepinstall)