The National Health Service (NHS) in England has given drugmakers and manufacturers of medical devices until Sept. 10 to advise on how they will stockpile their products made in Europe and sold to the British healthcare sector.

In a notice to industry players last week, UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock, said the NHS needs companies to have six weeks’ worth of supplies in addition to their regular buffers in order to be assured that there are no disruptions in supply.

“While we recognize that many companies will already have made their own arrangements we are keen to receive a response from all companies to ensure we have a comprehensive picture,” Hancock said, stressing that the government needs suppliers to confirm their plans on a product-by-product basis.

For drugs that can’t be produced in advance because of short shelf lives, the NHS wants to be assured that manufacturers can airlift them into the UK to avoid expected truck backups at borders.  It said it expects drugmakers to make similar plans for medicines produced in the UK and shipped to continental Europe, in particular to France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The NHS is drawing up additional contingency plans for vaccines used in its national vaccination campaign. Sanofi, the world’s largest influenza vaccine supplier, has said it is looking at all options on how to get vaccines to the UK punctually post-Brexit, as they cannot be made early.

One strategy under consideration calls for vaccines to be flown to predetermined spot in the UK where the government would release the delivery instantly, the French drugmaker’s CEO, Hugo Fry, told the London newspaper The Times. Another option, he said, would be to mark trucks so that they can pass customs without the usual checks.

Sanofi has announced it will lengthen its inventory of drugs for the UK from the usual 10 weeks to 14. AstraZeneca has said it is stockpiling drugs supplied by the UK and EU for each market, and Merck & Co. of the US plans to stockpile up to six months of goods and revise trade routes to be ready for supply blackouts and bottlenecks.

Both AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline have said in the past they may have to increase their use of EU testing facilities.

Since the UK voted to leave the EU two years ago, the country’s pharmaceutical industry has been urging the development of strategies or special considerations for drugs to avoid shortages of life-saving medication.

According to estimates, more than 2,600 medicines have some stage of manufacture in Britain, and 45 million patient packs are supplied from the UK to other European countries each month. Another 37 million flow in the other direction, reports the trade journal Fierce Pharma.

Steve Bates, CEO of the UK Bioindustry Association, told the news agency Reuters that for many companies the additional production up to the final Brexit deadline in March 2019  “will be “a massive challenge.”

Commenting on the uncertainties for both chemicals and pharmaceuticals, the German chemical industry association, Verband der Chemischen Industrie (VCI), said companies should brace themselves for a standstill post-Brexit and make ”suitable arrangements.”

 Without proper agreement or at least joint transitional rules for imports and exports, “chaos in the exchange of goods threatens,” said the association’s managing director, Utz Tillmann.

“Unilateral technical advice for stakeholders from the British government cannot solve the problem,” Tillmann commented, adding:” It is deplorable that the likelihood of failed negotiations is increasing by the day. Now it is high time for companies to prepare for the possibility of a Brexit without agreement.”

Keeping the UK in the EU chemicals agency ECHA after Brexit is enormously important for the chemical-pharmaceutical industry and our customer industries,” Tillmann said. “Tariff payments and time-consuming customs procedures at the border could totally disrupt many supply chains.”

In mid-October, the European Council will evaluate the state of negotiations.