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The U.S. government's push to develop a new anthrax vaccine is mired in problems and won't achieve a November deadline to stockpile 25 million doses of a new vaccine, the Washington Post reports.
VaxGen Inc., the California company in charge of the $1 billion project, has reported failure in a major human test and has fallen at least a year behind schedule. The company told the Post that it has isolated the problem with the new vaccine and is well on the way to correcting it.
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Even so, there's no chance the company will be able to meet the November deadline to deliver 25 million doses of the new vaccine into the U.S. national stockpile. That means that VaxGen will default on its contract with the government, unless federal authorities grant the contract extension requested by the company.
The delay in the VaxGen program has prompted the U.S. government to buy five million doses of an older, controversial anthrax vaccine, which is enough to treat two million people, the Post reported.
Officials at the U.S. Health and Human declined to discuss the VaxGen situation, but noted they've stockpiled enough antibiotics to treat 40 million people after a large-scale anthrax bioterrorism attack.
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