Speedier Vaccine Access Raises Odds Swine Flu May Be Controlled
The U.S. plans to begin vaccinations in the next three weeks, earlier than previous estimates of mid-October, as it faces an “unprecedented” fall outbreak, said Nancy Cox, director for the flu division of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her comments came just days after the the first tests found a single shot to be effective in 8 to 10 days in healthy adults. The next challenge is getting the immunization to people and convincing them to take it, she said.
The vaccine success is “the best news weve had in a very long time,” Cox said in an interview. The campaign is “going to take a lot of education and a lot of discussion. There is reluctance among some parents to have their children immunized and they perceive this vaccine to be in some way experimental.”
Manufacturing improvements and a single-dose vaccine may allow drugmakers to make enough vaccine to inoculate 3 billion people, said Marie-Paule Kieny, director of the World Health Organizations Initiative for Vaccine Research, in an e-mail.
“The really good news is that for everybody in the world, we will have more people protected earlier in both developing and developed countries,” Cox said at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in San Francisco.
Spike Seen
Influenza outbreaks do not typically occur in September in the Northern Hemisphere. Yet, cases in the U.S. spiked in the last few weeks to rates greater than last winters peak, the CDC reported on its Web site. In Memphis, 12 children with the H1N1 swine flu have been admitted to intensive care units in the past two weeks, said Jonathan McCullers, an infectious diseases doctor at the citys St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital.
Swine flu outbreaks have rippled across U.S. schools and universities after pupils returned to classes this month. Washington State University in Seattle reported more than 2,500 cases, and a student at Cornell University in New York died after 291 students fell ill.
“Seeing this much influenza activity this early is unprecedented,” Cox said. “One really cant predict who is going to have a severe infection, who is going to be hospitalized and who might die in advance. The best way to prevent infection by this new virus is to get the vaccine.”
Seasonal Flu Shots
A separate vaccination will be needed to protect against seasonal flu. Once the pandemic shots are available, the two shots can be given at the same time, Cox said. That will make administering the voluntary vaccine easier for doctors and school-based vaccination programs.
Setting up those programs and delivering the vaccines remain significant hurdles, she said.
“Myths” about vaccine side effects are circulating on the Internet, Cox said. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is distributing an online kit that includes scientific studies and fact sheets.
“I subscribe to an online newsletter that is very anti-flu shot,” said Gail Caswell, a 62-year-old San Francisco resident. “I dont know if I feel this way or not, but they even feel that some people are going to die from the shot and its almost population control.”
Video, Prints Ads
The Atlanta-based CDC is creating video and print advertisements for buses and Web sites including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, to teach people about the safety of the vaccine and the risks of infection.
Getting people most likely to benefit to use the vaccine is “challenging, especially when a lot of the messaging in the past has been about how this is a relatively mild disease with an overall impact thats not a lot different to seasonal flu,” said Frederick Hayden, professor of clinical virology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville. “I dont agree with that perspective.”
Health-care workers, who make up 1 percent to 2 percent of the global population, should get the vaccine first, according to the Geneva-based WHO. More than half of health-care workers surveyed in Hong Kong last month said they would refuse the shot after drugmakers expedited tests. A poll shows a third of U.K. nurses would do the same.
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