There’s nothing like an outbreak to get parents to vaccinate — or to help vaccine sales.
As a measles outbreak that started in California grew from seven cases on Jan. 7 to more than 100 a month later, sales of Merck & Co.’s measles vaccine surged as well.
From the first week the measles outbreak was in the news to a month later when cases neared their peak, the use of Merck’s M-M-R II vaccine more than quadruped to more than 4,000 a week, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Merck reported first-quarter results today showing that sales of the measles vaccine and two other inoculations grew 24 percent from the same time a year before, to $348 million. The extra sales helped the Kenilworth, New Jersey, drug maker beat analysts’ profit estimates.
“We certainly saw an increase in sales beginning in the first month of the quarter,” Adam Schechter, Merck’s head of global human health, said in an interview. “That was based upon a lot of attention in the media around certain measles outbreaks in the U.S.”
The outbreak prompted a national discussion about vaccination, with public health officials urging parents to get their children inoculated, and criticism of parents who chose not to, sometimes over fear of a link to autism. Doctors have debunked any such link.