By Denny Jacob
The Food and Drug Administration on Friday said there shouldn’t be an immediate significant impact on the supply of drugs producted at a Pfizer manufacturing facility in North Carolina that suffered extensive damage from a tornado earlier this week.
The drugs produced at the facility are currently available at hospitals or are in the distribution system. It noted that while Pfizer has one-third of the total sterile injectable drug market for hospitals in the U.S., the affected facility only makes 25% of Pfizer’s supply of the product.
The FDA said its initial analysis has identified less than 10 drugs that the plant is the sole source of for the U.S. market. It also said a number of them are specific formulations, and there should be substitutes or many weeks’ worth of stock available in other Pfizer warehouses.
The FDA said it has initiated mitigation steps such as looking for additional sources and asking other manufacturers to prepare to ramp up manufacturing for the products made at Pfizer’s North Carolina facility that already are or may be at risk of being in short supply.
Pfizer earlier Friday said most of this week’s tornado damage to its Rocky Mount, N.C. manufacturing plant affected its warehouse facility that stores raw materials for drugs, packaging materials and manufactured medicines awaiting shipment. Pfizer says the plant’s production areas weren’t damaged. The company is also trying to move and store medicines to other locations, replace damaged supplies, and shift manufacturing done at the plant to other locations.
Write to Denny Jacob at denny.jacob@wsj.com
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