A tornado in North Carolina severely damaged a key Pfizer plant, damaged several other structures, shut down a major interstate and injured at least four people.
The drug manufacturing plant was hit hard by the twister.
Pfizer’s Rocky Mount facility suffered severe damage from the tornado – video from helicopters showed the roof crumpled like paper and building debris scattered into the surrounding parking lot. There were no reports of injuries at the plant, according to a statement from the company.“We are assessing the situation to determine the impact on production. Our thoughts are with our colleagues, our patients, and the community as we rebuild from this weather incident,” the statement said.
This is a very troubling development, as the facility produces approximately one-quarter of the sterile injectable medicines used in this country.
The pharmaceutic company said it is assessing the situation to determine how production will be impacted.
According to Pfizer’s website, the company’s Rocky Mount location is “one of the largest sterile injectable facilities in the world,” with around 25 percent of all sterile injectables used in U.S. hospitals being produced at the site. The location makes several products, including anesthesia, therapeutics and anti-infectives.
The facility produces an arrray of products: Vials, syringes, IV bags and bottles of anesthesia, analgesia, therapeutics, anti-infectives and neuromuscular blockers.
The situation will certainly contribute to a problematic drug shortage that has arisen in recent years, increasing 30% from 2021 to 2022. When one drug manufacturer, Akorn Pharmaceuticals, closed its doors, that ended the production of 75 generic drugs.
The Lake Forest, Illinois-based drugmaker was responsible for producing 75 generic drugs, all of which were pulled from the market when the company closed down. In some cases, the company was the sole supplier of particular products.The closure comes amid — and contributed to — an ongoing drug shortage crisis in the U.S. Akorn’s bankruptcy and subsequent shuttering are part of a bigger disaster caused by fewer manufacturers’ in the U.S. making cheaper generic drugs, scarce profits for the remaining companies and an overly complicated global supply chain that could leave patients scrambling for lifesaving medications for months or possibly years to come.New drug shortages increased by nearly 30% from 2021 to 2022, affecting 295 products at the end of last year, according to a March report from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. The drug shortages are affecting cancer patients who are in desperate need of chemotherapy drugs and people in intensive care units or emergency rooms who need certain generic intravenous medications, which are in tight supply.The shortages are getting worse: As of June, there were more than 300 active drug shortages, the most in nearly a decade, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, a professional organization that tracks drug shortages.
There are also shortages of two key chemotherapy drugs, cisplatin and carboplatin, which are deployed as frontline medicines in cocktails used to shrink or eliminate tumors.
Oncologists are concerned that the alternatives to two crucial chemotherapy drugs are far less effective in treating certain cancers, and are sometimes more toxic. The backup therapies or lack thereof, they say, pose particularly troubling prospects for patients with ovarian, testicular, breast, lung and head and neck cancers.There are few, if any, signs that the shortage will ease anytime soon. A plant that was a main producer of the more popular drugs shut down late last year and has not reopened, depleting its stock. The easing of restrictions on imported drugs from China this month has provided some relief, but doctors said the influx has yet to make much of a dent. Some companies that sell the medications are projecting that the shortage will last through the fall or later.
There are currently 181 drugs that have been reported in short supply by the Food and Drug Administration. Hopefully, the Pfizer team can resume production of key medications soon before even more items go on the list.
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