ATLANTA, (Reuters) – About half the U.S. population should get vaccinated against H1N1 influenza but pregnant women and healthcare workers should be at the front of the line, U.S. health advisers agreed yesterday.
Up to 160 million doses of flu vaccine will be available for the start of a vaccination campaign planned for mid-October. The Advisory Panel on Immunization Practices recommended that state and local health officials prepare to vaccinate as many as 150 million people.
Each person will likely need two flu vaccine doses and officials said it was not clear exactly how much vaccine would be available when.
“The main message is that it’s half the population (who are the priority to be vaccinated). And it’s the younger half of the population, as well as health care workers,” said Kathy Neuzil, ACIP influenza work group chairwoman.
The group nearly unanimously accepted advice from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Human Services Department almost always follow the advice of the committee.
The recommendations said pregnant women, people who care for babies and healthcare workers should be the first protected against the virus — a total of around 41 million people — in the event that not enough vaccine is available.
People at risk of serious complications from catching the flu should follow — and then healthy young adults aged 19 to 24, the panel said.
Members of the panel said young adults should be a priority because they are more likely to become infected and tend to work in places that would accelerate the flu’s spread.
“They penetrate our society at service-level jobs, at entry-level jobs, so there is going to be a lot of transmission from these people,” panel member Dr. Carol Baker of the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas told the meeting.
Pregnant women are at special risk from the new strain, and vaccinating them protects their newborns, too, the CDC’s Dr. Anthony Fiore told the committee.
A CDC report released earlier yesterday showed pregnant women were four times as likely as other people to suffer severe complications and even die from H1N1 infection.
Five companies are making H1N1 vaccine for the U.S. market — AstraZeneca’s MedImmune unit, Australia’s CSL Ltd, GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Novartis AG and Sanofi-Aventis SA. It is not clear how many doses of vaccine will be available right away but the United States would need 600 million doses to immunize everyone.
