A tornado caused extensive damage at a Pfizer drug manufacturing site in Rocky Mount, NC, on Wednesday, threatening critical supplies for hospitals across the country.
The company estimates that a quarter of the injectable drugs it provides to US hospitals are made at the Rocky Mount property, including drugs used during surgeries and other procedures to help block pain, keep patients sedated and fight infections.
While the company has not yet disclosed the extent of the storm’s impact, site video footage and interviews with the Nash County sheriff and people cited for damage indicate the tornado caused the most damage to the company’s warehouse.
On Thursday, Pfizer declined to comment on the affected drugs or the proportion of its supply destroyed in the tornado, which could be large because many of these drugs require careful production and handling to ensure sterility.
It is also unclear how deeply the breakdown will worsen the existing national drug shortage, which has reached a 10-year high these past few months. Hospitals are on high alert because cheap generic products made on site, such as the sedative propofol, are among the most shortage-prone on the market.
“From a health care practitioner’s perspective, I’m just holding my breath,” said Michael Ganio, a senior director at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.
The tornado touched down in a 16-mile stretch of the Rocky Mount area, about 50 miles east of Raleigh, around 12:30 a.m. Wednesday. It snapped trees at the base and tossed homes 20 yards from their foundations, according to a summary of National Weather Service. The tornado reached wind speeds of up to 150 miles per hour before tearing off large pieces of the metal roof of a Pfizer building and overturning big rig trucks in the parking lot. Sixteen people were injured, but no deaths were reported.
Several people said the tornado caused the most damage to a company warehouse; the impact on the manufacturing plant — and its ability to continue making drugs — is not yet clear, according to Mittal Sutaria, a senior vice president of pharmacy contracts at Vizient, which provides contracting for drugs to hospitals.
He said Pfizer and the Food and Drug Administration have teams in place to assess the damage.
Dr. Sutaria, who said Vizient contacted Pfizer, added that the Rocky Mount site made anesthesia products including propofol, which is used to sedate patients during surgery, as well as fentanyl and morphine, which are used in IVs for pain management. It also makes vancomycin, an antibiotic administered to fight chronic infections, and muscle blockers including succinylcholine, which is also used in surgery.
Keith Stone, the sheriff of Nash County, where Rocky Mount is located, told local news reporters on Wednesday that a large part of the Pfizer building was blown to pieces, the roof collapsed and up to 50,000 pallets of medicine were destroyed.
About 100 vehicles were damaged, including forklift trucks that were scattered across nearby railroad tracks, Sheriff Stone said in an interview Thursday. “It’s amazing what can come so quickly and have so much damage and disappear so quickly,” he said.
Steve Danehy, a spokesman for Pfizer, said Thursday that the company’s Rocky Mount team was “working hard to address and assess the situation,” but did not provide any details. The company said its staff survived the tornado without serious injuries.
Pfizer is expected to report its findings to the Food and Drug Administration, which tracks shortages.
“We are closely monitoring the situation as it develops and are working with the company to understand the extent of the damage and any potential impact on the country’s drug supply,” said Chanapa Tantibanchachai, a spokesperson for the agency.
The Rocky Mount facility, established in 1968, employs 4,500 people and has 24 filling lines and 22 packing lines. Although not as large as Pfizer’s manufacturing complex in Kalamazoo, Mich., the North Carolina site encompasses 1.4 million square feet of manufacturing space. Medicines produced at the site are also shipped to Japan, Canada, Brazil and other countries.
The specific products produced at the Pfizer plant — and the market share they comprise — are generally not public information. However, the company sells dozens of injectable itemsincluding IV antibiotics, anti-seizure drugs used in brain surgery and even an antidote to coral snake venom.
Many Pfizer drugs were already in short supply before the tornado: About 130 products sold in hospitals are listed as “out of stock” and about 100 more are in “limited supply,” according to the company’s listing of 660 products.
Pfizer has other manufacturing plant in Kansas, New York, Massachusetts and Wisconsin where the company may move some production to mitigate any shortages resulting from the Rocky Mount destruction.
Soumi Saha, a senior vice president at Premier, a company that provides contracting services for drugs to hospitals, said Pfizer has a strong track record for building in some redundancy so products are made at more than one site.
If storm damage is limited to warehouses and does not affect production schedules at manufacturing plants, potential shortages could be minimized, he said.
Dr. recalls Such are other drug shortages caused by disasters in production zones.
Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, leaving hospitals scrambling for IV bags. Another happened last year when a region of China hit hard by Covid had a lapse in the production of contrast dye for CT scans and other medical images. And in recent months, doctors have warned that survival rates for some cancer patients are at risk because production has stopped at a manufacturing plant in India after the FDA cited major quality losses.
With alarming shortages affecting so many lives — and resulting in the stockpiling of certain drugs and bartering advocates who find meager drugs for the most desperate — policy experts, lawmakers and federal officials have been discussing solutions in recent weeks.
On Thursday, Senate lawmakers passed a pandemic preparedness bill from a key health committee. It has provisions aimed at preventing shortages and increasing reports by drug makers to alert the FDA to circumstances that could lead to shortages so the agency can help them eliminate them.
The bill would also require a report from the FDA within 90 days of the law’s passage on the agency’s ability to deal with deficiencies and whether it needs more help from lawmakers.
However, the natural occurrence of a tornado provided a stark reminder of the need to better manage shortages.
“This reinforces the need for resilience in our supply chain and a real focus on preparedness, not just for the next pandemic,” said Dr. Saha, “but for any unforeseen event that creates shocks in our supply chain.”