Update: When Will the BD Bactec Vial Shortage End?

In early 2024, supply chain disruptions caused shortages of Becton, Dickinson and Co.'s BD Bactec blood culture vials, leading to a flurry of BD Life Sciences and US government alerts, updates, and recommendations. This was big news in the US, given that about half of the country’s laboratories use the BD continuous-monitoring blood culture system, which is only compatible with BD Bactec blood culture media bottles.

The latest BD Bactec Update, August 23, suggests the company expects production levels to meet 100% of historic demand levels by the end of September for the US market. The company also said that by year's end, it expects to produce 125% of historical weekly demand “to enable distributors and customers in the U.S. to begin rebuilding inventory and safety stock.”

To help bridge the shortage gap, BD Life Sciences introduced Lytic/10 Anaerobic/F Culture vials in glass in early September. BD issued an interim shelf-life extension for specific lots of BD Bactec Plus Aerobic, Plus Anaerobic, Lytic Anaerobic, and Peds Plus SKUs in the United States. BD also said it was implementing mitigation measures, such as working with its raw material supplier of the molded bottles to improve production line efficiency and output.

Calls to conserve and plan for the future.

Related:BD Bactec Blood Culture Media Bottles in Shortage

The FDA alerted healthcare providers about disruptions in bottle availability on June 10 and updated this information with additional resources on August 15. Among the recommendations, users should develop strategies to prioritize the use of blood culture media bottles based on clinical need and medical necessity.

In a letter to the editor published in October in Clinical Microbiology and Infection, the authors point to global actions that could help prevent future shortages and urged manufacturers to revise the vials’ storage temperature instructions. Today’s temperature-controlled storage of blood culture bottles is not a reality in many low and middle-income countries, they wrote.

“To improve access to diagnostics, the shelf life of diagnostic products should be reconsidered. The WHO Prequalification of Diagnostics already recommends storage stability testing at a broader temperature range and humidity levels for diagnostic products such as malaria rapid diagnostic tests. In accordance with this, policymakers should incentivize manufacturers to report stability testing for extended durations and under higher temperatures,” they wrote.