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A tornado caused extensive damage to a Pfizer drug manufacturing site in Rocky Mount, North Carolina on Wednesday, threatening critical supplies to hospitals across the country.
The company estimated that a quarter of the injectable drugs it supplies to U.S. hospitals were made on Rocky Mount property, including drugs used in surgeries and other procedures to help block pain, keep patients sedated and fight infections.
Although the company has yet to reveal the extent of the storm’s impact, video footage from the site and interviews with the Nash County Sheriff and people briefed on the damage indicated that the tornado caused the worst damage to the company’s warehouse.
On Thursday, Pfizer declined to comment on the drugs affected or the proportion of its supply destroyed in the tornado, which could be significant given that many of these drugs required careful production and handling to ensure sterility.
It was also unclear to what extent the destruction would aggravate existing national drug shortages, which have reached a 10 year high These last months. Hospitals are on high alert as low-cost generic products made on the site are already among the most shortage-prone on the market.
“From a healthcare professional’s perspective, I’m just holding my breath,” said Michael Ganio, senior director of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.
The tornado moved through a 16-mile swath of the Rocky Mount area, about 50 miles east of Raleigh, around 12:30 p.m. Wednesday. It snapped trees at the base and threw houses 20 meters from their foundations, according to a summary of the National Weather Service. The tornado reached wind speeds of up to 150 miles per hour before ripping large chunks off the metal roof of a Pfizer building and overturning large trucks in the parking lot. Sixteen people were injured, but no fatalities were reported.
Several people said the tornado caused the most damage to a company warehouse; the impact on the manufacturing plant — and its ability to continue producing drugs — is not yet clear, according to Mittal Sutaria, senior vice president of pharmacy contracts at Vizient, which provides drug contracts to hospitals.
She said Pfizer had crews on site to assess the damage.
Dr Sutaria, who said Vizient had been in contact with Pfizer, added that the Rocky Mount site manufactures anesthesia products, as well as fentanyl and morphine, which are used in IVs for pain management. It also makes antibiotics given to fight against severe infections, and muscle blockers including succinylcholine, also used in surgery.
Keith Stone, the sheriff of Nash County, where Rocky Mount is located, told local reporters Wednesday that a large part of the Pfizer building was shattered, the roof was crushed and up to 50,000 pallets of medicine were destroyed.
About 100 vehicles were also damaged, including forklifts strewn across nearby train tracks, Sheriff Stone said in an interview Thursday. “It’s amazing what can happen so fast and take so much damage and go so fast,” he said.
Steve Danehy, a spokesman for Pfizer, said Thursday that the company’s Rocky Mount team was “working very hard to address and assess the situation,” but offered no details. The company said its staff survived the tornado without serious injuries.
Pfizer is expected to report its findings to the Food and Drug Administration, which tracks shortages.
“We are closely monitoring the evolving situation and working with the company to understand the extent of the damage and any potential impact on the country’s drug supply,” said Chanapa Tantibanchachai, spokesperson for the agency.
The Rocky Mount plant, established in 1968, employs 4,500 people and has 24 filling lines and 22 packaging lines. Although not as large as Pfizer’s manufacturing complex in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the North Carolina site spans 1.4 million square feet of manufacturing space. Drugs manufactured at the site are also shipped to Japan, Canada, Brazil and other countries.
The specific products manufactured at the Pfizer factory – and the market share they represent – are generally not public information. However, the company sells dozens of injectable itemsincluding IV antibiotics, anti-epileptic drugs used in brain surgery, and even an antidote to coral snake venom.
Many Pfizer drugs were already in short supply before the tornado: About 130 products marketed to hospitals were listed as “sold out” and about 100 more were in “limited supply,” according to the company’s listing. of 660 products.
Pfizer has other manufacturing activities plants in Kansas, New York, Massachusetts and Wisconsin, where the company could potentially move some production to ease shortages resulting from the destruction of Rocky Mount.
Soumi Saha, senior vice president of Premier, a company that provides drug contracting services to hospitals, said Pfizer has a strong track record of building in some redundancy so that products are made at more than one site.
If the storm damage is limited to the warehouse and does not affect production schedules at manufacturing plants, it could alleviate potential shortages, she said.
Dr. Ganio recalled other drug shortages caused by disasters in production areas.
Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, leaving hospitals scrambling for IV bags. Another happened last year when a region of China hard hit by Covid saw a disruption in produce a contrast dye for CT scans and other medical images. And in recent months, doctors have warned that the survival rates of some cancer patients are at risk due to production halting at a manufacturing plant in India after the FDA cited major quality flaws.
Given the worrisome shortages affecting so many lives — and which have led to hoarding of some drugs and barter between advocates who trade and find rare drugs for the most desperate — policy experts, lawmakers and federal officials have been discussing solutions in recent weeks.
On Thursday, Senate lawmakers passed a pandemic preparedness bill by a key health committee. It included provisions to stem shortages and increase drugmaker reporting to alert the FDA to circumstances that could lead to shortages so the agency can help avoid them.
The bill would also require a report from the FDA within 90 days of the legislation passing on the agency’s ability to deal with shortages and whether it needs more help from lawmakers.
However, the natural occurrence of a tornado was a stark reminder of the need to better manage shortages.
“This reinforces the need for resilience in our supply chain and a real focus on preparedness, not just for the next pandemic,” Dr. Saha said, “but for any unforeseen circumstances that create shocks in our supply chain.”
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