Agence France-Presse reports on recent moves of governments in Greece and Norway to reduce H1N1 vaccine orders. Greece on Monday "cancelled 12.3 million of its flu vaccine orders, from a total of 16 million originally destined for the 11 million Greek population," the news service reports. Norway reduced its order of H1N1 vaccines by 30 percent, according to the country's health ministry (1/18). 

The Belgium health ministry on Friday announced its decision to reduce the country's H1N1 vaccine order with GlaxoSmithKline by a third would save the government $47.6 million, Reuters reports (Deighton, 1/15).

A representative from the drugmaker Novartis on Friday said the company considers the contracts it had with governments for H1N1 vaccines binding, the Wall Street Journal reports. "One possible solution that could satisfy both ends of the bargaining table - drugmakers and governments - is to defer supply of the already ordered vaccine until it is needed for the next flu pandemic, a person familiar with the matter said," the newspaper writes (Griel, 1/15).

In a second story, the Wall Street Journal examines the total sales earned by the drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline from H1N1 vaccine. The company "said Friday that swine-flu shipments, coupled with other pandemic vaccine products supplied to the U.S. and other governments in the three months ended Dec. 30, amounted to provisional sales of 835 million ($1.36 billion)," the newspaper writes. GlaxoSmithKline "said that it would continue to keep up shipments despite order cancellations after the swine-flu pandemic turned out to be milder than expected." The company also plans to donate 60 million doses of its H1N1 vaccine to the WHO, the newspaper adds (Cauchi, 1/15).

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