Zoetis' bird flu vaccine gets conditional approval in US

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has given a conditional approval to Zoetis to use its bird flu vaccine in poultry, the animal healthcare company said on Friday.

Bird flu has infected nearly 70 people in the United States, with one death, since last April. Most of those infections have been among farm workers exposed to infected poultry or cows.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, has said the risk of infection to the general public is low.

Zoetis, which deals with vaccines, medicines as well as diagnostic solutions for animals, said the conditional license was granted based on safety and reasonable expectation of efficacy.

A conditional approval, called as a conditional license, is used for emergencies, limited market availability, or other special circumstance and is issued for a finite period of time.

Last month, USDA said it would rebuild a stockpile of bird flu vaccines for poultry that match the strain of the virus circulating in commercial flocks and wild birds.

The U.S. had built a poultry vaccine stockpile after major bird flu outbreaks in 2014 and 2015, though they were never used.

The vaccines were developed by Merck, Ceva and one by U.S. government researchers, David Suarez, who was acting laboratory director of USDA’s Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory in Athens, Georgia, had said in a 2023 interview.

Separately, Moderna is developing a bird flu vaccine for humans and has received about $766 million from the U.S. government for its advancement.

The company said last month it was preparing to advance its experimental shot, mRNA-1018, into late-stage trials based on preliminary data from an early- to mid-stage study.