The maker of a key bird flu drug said yesterday that sales of the treatment had more than doubled as countries stocked up ahead of a possible pandemic.
Swiss firm Roche said sales of Tamiflu, which is seen as the best treatment for bird flu, soared to 279 million Swiss francs (£122 million) in its third quarter.
A number of countries, including the UK, have been stockpiling the antiviral drug, helping Roche report a 17 per cent rise in group revenues in the three months to the end of September.
Basel-based Roche employs 1,800 staff in the United Kingdom, with its UK headquarters at Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire and a sales and marketing base at Lewes, East Sussex.
The firm produces more than 100 million capsules of Tamiflu a year and has already expanded its production capacity several times. It said today that it would take action to further boost production.
Since 2003, around 120 people worldwide have been diagnosed with the potentially lethal H5N1 bird flu strain, leading to 60 deaths.
Experts believe it is inevitable that a pandemic will emerge and could kill more than 50,000 people in the UK alone.
In March, the Department of Health announced the purchase of 14.6 million courses of Tamiflu.
Broker Merrill Lynch said the Tamiflu sales figures were ahead of its forecasts.
Worldwide, Roche employs around 65,000 staff in 150 countries.
It was claimed last week that attempts to control bird flu could be helping to create a drug-resistant form of the virus.
A study by the journal Nature said scientists had identified a strain of H5N1 in Vietnam that is resistant to Tamiflu.
It was found in a Vietnamese girl who had been put on a course of preventative treatment with Tamiflu for four days in February.
The UK Government has no plans to offer Tamiflu to healthy people as a precaution. But the drug is being used as a preventative measure in Asian hotspots where about 60 people have been killed by the virus. Viruses and bacteria can become resistant if the treatment used against them is too weak.
Meanwhile, Roche's chief executive, Franz Humer, said the company would not let patents stand in the way of getting Tamiflu to patients if a pandemic broke out.
"Patents will not stand in the way of producing the drug for mankind," Mr Humer said, confirming the company had been approached by Taiwan for permission to make the drug.
"We will talk to anybody - people who can manufacture the drug, and are able to manufacture it faster than us, and complement our manufacturing," he said.
Mr Humer added that Roche could itself satisfy current levels of demand for a normal flu season, plus orders it had received.
" We are now building capacities in anticipation of additional orders," he said.
" We are working very closely with the American government. And that's why it is important to work with other governments, to say: What do you have? Can you help us?" he said.
Humer said he was confident that Roche would sort out its legal dispute with the discoverer of Tamiflu, the U. firm Gilead Sciences Inc, with which it is locked in a legal battle over the rights to Tamiflu.
He denied that the company had been under official pressure to consider granting other companies licences to make the drug.
"We had been working on this plan for a number of weeks and were waiting for the US FDA approval (of a manufacturing plant)," he said.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a manufacturing plant in the United States, one of 12 production sites worldwide, to be used to make the drug.
