Sanofi-Aventis SA and Baxter International Inc. are talking with world health authorities about how to speed production of a vaccine to meet the global swine flu outbreak.

Baxter, which is developing vaccines for seasonal and avian influenza, will receive a sample of the swine flu virus "in the next couple days," said Chris Bona, a spokesman for the Deerfield, Illinois, company, in a telephone interview today.

Baxter is part of a group of companies that will be meeting weekly with the World Health Organization to discuss development of a vaccine for the H1N1 virus, Bona said.

"We are in constant discussions with the government about how and if we should go ahead and produce a vaccine," Donna Cary, a spokeswoman for Sanofi's Sanofi-Pasteur unit in Swiftwater, Pennsylvania, said today in an interview.

Reference strains for the virus were distributed and a pre- planned development process is under way, said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, at a news conference today in Washington. The National Institutes of Health, the parent agency, plans to perform clinical tests to determine the vaccine dose and it may be tested in people within "a couple of months" Fauci said.