Bavarian Nordic Bags Contract for Advanced Smallpox Vaccine

The federal government will be awarding a $500 million contract to Bavarian Nordic A/S (Kvistgård, Denmark, www.bavarian-nordic.com) to deliver 20 million doses of an advanced smallpox vaccine. The government already has a stockpile of vaccine that could be used to immunize every American in the event of a smallpox attack by terrorists. However, as the existing vaccine sometimes causes serious side effects, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is asking the European company to make enough of its vaccine to immunize about 10 million Americans, such as patients on chemotherapy or people with HIV/AIDS. The company said the contract could be worth $1.6 billion.