Tag Archives: vaccine

New survey suggests Americans keen for H1N1 vaccine

in.reuters.com

New survey suggests Americans keen for H1N1 vaccine

Days before the swine flu vaccine becomes available, more than half of U.S. adults say they will get the vaccine for themselves and 75 percent will get it for their children, according to a survey released on Friday.

Forty percent said they would not get the H1N1 vaccine, the team at the Harvard School of Public Health found.

“These findings suggest that public health officials need to be prepared for a surge in demand for the H1N1 vaccine if the H1N1 flu becomes more severe,” said Harvard’s Robert Blendon, who led the study.

The survey conflicts with one published earlier this week by Consumer Reports showing only 35 percent of Americans would definitely have their children vaccinated.

The Harvard researchers polled 1,042 U.S. adults for what they said was a representative sample of national opinion late last month.

The poll results suggest more people would get a swine flu vaccine than usually get vaccinated against seasonal influenza in the United States, where flu kills an estimated 36,000 mostly elderly people a year.

H1N1 swine flu was declared a pandemic in June and it has circulated globally ever since.

Companies have been rushing to make and distribute vaccines for H1N1 and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the first 600,000 doses will arrive in cities, states and counties that ordered them next week.

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Experts hope H1N1 will spur effort on universal jab

in.reuters.com

Experts hope H1N1 will spur effort on universal jab

The H1N1 swine flu pandemic should spur pharmaceutical researchers to renew efforts to develop a universal flu vaccine and rethink ways of dealing with future pandemics, scientists said on Friday.

Flu experts from the World Health Organization, Swiss drug giant Novartis AG, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and others noted that the arrival of H1N1 had prompted a jump in the potential output of vaccine manufacturing to 900 million doses from 400 million.

But in a letter to the journal Science, they urged drug and health industries to be more proactive in developing and distributing vaccines — and in particular to speed up the search for a universal flu vaccine.

“Although the H1N1 pandemic has the potential to cause a social and economic emergency, it also provides an opportunity to rethink our approach to influenza virus disease and to develop more effective vaccines and economically sustainable solutions for developing and developed countries,” they wrote. “Research toward development of a universal vaccine should be accelerated.”

A universal flu vaccine which would combat all strains of the virus has so far eluded pharmaceutical firms and scientists.

Inovio Biomedical Corp, which is working on such a vaccine, said this week that it expects initial evidence early next year on whether the technology it is using can help to fight diseases.

Johnson & Johnson, the world’s biggest diversified health care company, recently bought a stake in Dutch biotech firm Crucell partly to get hold of flu-mAb, a universal antibody engineered to prevent and treat infections from various influenza A strains.

The swine flu outbreak was declared a pandemic in June and has already infected millions of people around the world. Drugmakers and governments have been scrambling to make and supply vaccines targeting the new H1N1 strain before a feared second wave of infection hits as the northern hemisphere heads into winter.

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Swine flu vaccine due next week in Pa., N.J.

swine-flu-and-you-af

Swine flu vaccine due next week in Pa., N.J.

After months of anticipation, the first doses of swine flu vaccine are expected to arrive next week, public health officials said yesterday as the federal government began accepting orders from the states.

In Pennsylvania, they will go to healthy children ages 5 to 9 in just three regions of the state, including the southeast. New Jersey will direct a smaller number of doses to ages 2 through 24 statewide.

The priority lists are likely to change weekly, if not daily, as the federal government ramps up the biggest vaccination campaign it has ever attempted.

Pregnant women, for example, are among those at highest risk from the disease – but the first doses, in a nasal spray, will be a form of live virus that isn’t safe for them. Shots made with an inactivated or “dead” virus should arrive a week or so later.

The live virus is safe for children without underlying medical conditions. Children are the most likely of all age groups to catch and spread the new flu. While most people will require one dose, children under 10 will need two, nearly a month apart, to trigger a robust immune response. (The same applies to children getting seasonal flu vaccine for the first time.) So children will get first dibs.

“Targeting the healthy and the young is a good way to get this vaccine out quickly to a significant population,” said Susan Walsh, a deputy state health commissioner in New Jersey.

Where to get the vaccine?

Officials in both states urged parents to call their pediatricians, although they are not likely to know that they will have the vaccine until it actually arrives. Many schools, including those in Philadelphia, will hold vaccination clinics; letters and permission forms will go out to parents beforehand.

Health department Web sites for New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia – the three local overseers for swine flu vaccination – will list locations when more doses become available, officials said. All vaccinations are voluntary.

Because the swine flu vaccine was purchased entirely by the federal government, providers can charge only an administration fee, and many will offer it free. It generally will not be available from supermarkets and pharmacies that run clinics for seasonal vaccine.

Swine flu was more common than the seasonal strains in the southern hemisphere, which experienced a full influenza season after the novel H1N1 first appeared in Mexico and the United States in April.

That has led to scattered reports in the north that the seasonal vaccine would be unnecessary. Public health officials strongly disagreed.

“We have no idea what the interplay is going to be between [swine] flu and the seasonal flu,” said Stephen Ostroff, Pennsylvania’s acting physician general.

Those seeking to cover all their bases might also want to consider a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention yesterday saying that, as in previous flu pandemics, bacterial pneumonia contributed to some swine flu deaths in spring and summer.

Pneumococcal vaccine is in plentiful supply, as is seasonal flu vaccine.

But no one knows how many people will want them, let alone the new swine flu vaccine. Just 35 percent of adults in New Jersey and 38 percent in Pennsylvania said they got the seasonal flu vaccine last year, according to the most recent federal survey.

And a Consumer Reports poll released yesterday found that just 35 percent of parents said they definitely would have their children vaccinated for swine flu.

“Who wants it? Who knows?” said Caroline Johnson, director of the division of disease control for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.

Despite the newness of the vaccine, public health officials say they have no safety concerns. It is essentially the “seasonal vaccine with a different strain contained in it,” said Ostroff.

The first-to-arrive spray form of the vaccine contains no thimerosal – a preservative that some people believe is linked to other diseases – and later versions will be available both with or without it, officials said.

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