Swine flu vaccine ‘months away’
By Liz Stephens
Protection against swine flu for millions of Britons may not be available for several months the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned today.
Dr Margaret Chan, WHO director general said: “There’s no vaccine. One should be available soon, in August.
“But having a vaccine available is not the same as having a vaccine that has been proven safe. Clinical trial data will not be available for another two to three months.”
Ministers had previously claimed in parliament that the first stocks of the vaccine would be available in the UK in August but Dr Chan’s remarks would seem to contradict this.
The news follows earlier comments by Dr Alan Hay, director of the WHO’s World Influenza Centre, who said the extensive summer outbreak in Britain had not followed expected patterns.
It had previously been supposed that the virus would not reach a critical point until the Autumn.
Dr Hay called health secretary Andy Burnham’s announcement in the Commons that a vaccine would be available next month “a bit optimistic”.
Public anxiety about swine flu has grown since the death of six-year-old London schoolgirl Chloe Buckley, who unlike other victims of the disease, had previously enjoyed good health.
Sixteen people in the UK have now died after contracting swine flu.
Mr Burnham urged the public yesterday to keep the threat posed “in perspective”, noting the vast majority of sufferers made a full recovery.
He also reiterated that Britain was at the “front of the queue” for vaccine stocks.
A Department of Health spokeswoman said: “We expect delivery of the vaccine in the coming months. Vaccine development can take some time. We hope to have enough vaccine by the end of the year to cover half of the population, but that’s a forecast and it could go up or it could decrease.”
Latest swine flu developments were discussed at Cabinet level yesterday.
