Cerus Corporation Provides Update on COVID-19 Related Activities

Cerus Corporation (Nasdaq:CERS) today announced the Company’s recent activities related to COVID-19 and efforts to ensure that patients have readily available access to pathogen-reduced blood components, including convalescent plasma.

“As the world endures the impact from the current COVID-19 pandemic, our focused mission of ensuring the availability and safety of the world’s blood supply has never been more relevant. The impact that this pandemic has had on the security of the supply chains for our blood center and hospital customers is unprecedented,” said William ‘Obi’ Greenman, Cerus’ president and chief executive officer. “During this challenging time for our customers, Cerus is focused on helping them maintain the safety and availability of the blood supply, while also providing the assistance they need with regard to standing up programs to produce COVID-19 convalescent plasma in sufficient quantities given the many hospital inquiries globally. We are highly focused on ensuring patients have access to our products and on protecting the health and safety of our employees and the communities in which we operate. Our financial strength prepares us to navigate this pandemic while continuing to execute on the business objectives to support our long-term growth.”

Our commitment to blood providers, hospitals and, ultimately, patients:

• Our global supply chain for the INTERCEPT platelet disposable kits is currently intact and at this time, we are confident in our ability to supply INTERCEPT disposable kits. In anticipation of greater demand for INTERCEPT, we increased our inventory levels in 2019 and believe we have ample supply to meet our customers’ needs.
• Fresenius Kabi (FK), our primary manufacturing partner, produces INTERCEPT disposable kits at a facility in France and is classified as an essential business by the French Government. To ensure employee safety and comply with local requirements for social distancing, the FK team recently reconfigured production workflow and the facility continues to produce kits. Going forward, employee absenteeism, at the manufacturing site, is a potential risk that could negatively impact monthly production.
• We and our key suppliers have enacted business continuity measures which are currently in place and have allowed INTERCEPT disposable kit production and business growth to remain unaffected. However, our supply chain is not without vulnerabilities and should the current COVID-19 situation persist beyond the summer or worsen regionally or globally, our business could be adversely impacted.

Our commitment to our employees and their families: