Catalent Responds to the Global Outbreak of COVID-19
Many governments of the countries where we operate have recognized our work as essential, and currently, all Catalent operating facilities remain open and continuing to deliver to our customers and their patients. Catalent’s multiple ongoing investments into expanding our capabilities and capacity to serve our customers are currently proceeding across biologics, cell & gene, oral dose form and inhaled solutions.
In addition, we are working with several customers on multiple COVID-related antivirals, vaccines, diagnostics and treatments for symptoms and effects of the disease, including Johnson & Johnson’s lead vaccine candidate, Arcturus Therapeutics’ mRNA-based vaccine, and Humanigen’s GM-CSF monoclonal antibody. We have been declared an essential business by all the national/local governments where we operate, allowing us to sustain full employment for our teams, and are pleased to be in a position to pay a Thank You bonus to our lab, development and production employees who are working on these and other products at our 40+ global facilities.
To address the impact of the outbreak, our senior, multi-disciplinary Coronavirus Response Team, reporting directly to our CEO, continuously monitors the global situation and swiftly executes mitigation activities whenever and wherever required.
To help ensure the safety of our employees and partners and to protect supply to patients, we have taken extensive actions, in line with guidelines issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the World Health Organization (WHO), and local authorities where we operate. These safety measures include re-emphasizing good hygiene practices to all, severely restricting visitor access to our sites, reorganizing our workflows where permitted to maximize social distancing, limiting employees to only business-critical travel (where permitted by local government policy), facilitating safer alternatives for travel to and from work, and, wherever possible, employing remote-working strategies.
We continue to survey deep into our supply chain and have not identified any significant risk, delay, or concern that may have a substantial effect on delivery of any product or clinical trial supplies. We have adopted specific procedures to minimize and manage any future disruption to our ongoing operations. These include expanded safety stocks of raw materials and Personal Protective Equipment across our network, as well as ongoing monitoring of our suppliers’ stock levels to assure future deliveries.
Our existing Standard Operating Procedures, which are consistent with current Good Manufacturing Practices, ensure the integrity of our supply against any contamination. We have added a detailed response plan to manage any impact of the virus on employee health, site operations, and product supply, including immediate assessment of the health of employees reporting symptoms, comprehensive risk assessment of any impact to quality, additional cleaning protocols, and alternative shift patterns to compensate should fewer employees be available.
We will notify and consult with our partners should we foresee any impact on supply.
Customers who may have specific questions about a product or project, or anyone requiring additional information regarding a potential or planned visit to a Catalent facility should contact their usual Catalent contact or any customer service representative.
As we navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, we will continue to put the Patient First and do everything possible to keep our people safe and healthy, while we continue to strive to meet the needs and expectations of our customers.
Last update: May 7, 2020