Swine flu ‘window of opportunity’ opens for vaccine

Declining infection rates for swine flu and a greater supply of vaccine have opened a “window of opportunity” to protect people against the illness, said the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 70 million doses of vaccine are now available, and supply will be increasing in coming weeks, Thomas Frieden, the head of the CDC, said last week in a conference call. Flu rates in the U.S. have dropped to their lowest in about two months, offering an opportunity to vaccinate people to head off the possibility of a new wave of infections of H1N1 influenza.
Visits to U.S. doctors by patients with flu symptoms have declined for four straight weeks, and widespread illness was reported in 32 states, the fewest since September, according to the CDC. Hospitalizations, deaths and doctor visits remain at levels more like those typically seen in February when seasonal flu peaks.
“There’s been a decline in activity, but there’s still a lot of flu,” Frieden said in a briefing at the Atlanta-based CDC. “We’re far from out of the woods, but we have an opportunity to get more people protected in case there’s another surge or wave in future months.”
Scientists are split about the chances for a third wave of swine flu infections. An informal poll of a dozen top scientists found half thought another increase in U.S. cases was likely, while half thought it wasn’t likely, Frieden said.
Swine flu, first identified in April, swept the globe at an unprecedented rate and infected millions of Americans in summer months when influenza normally doesn’t circulate. Children and young adults are especially at risk of severe complications from the new pandemic H1N1 strain, and the return to school in August and September touched off the second, more severe, round of infections.
“We’ve had our second peak, and the real question is [whether] enough children have been infected such that they’re immune,” said Ira Longini, a statistician at University of Washington in Seattle who advises the U.S. government on flu. Longini said the pandemic is on the decline, and he doesn’t expect a third wave of infections when children return from winter vacation in January, which often accompanies a surge in flu cases. UnitedHealth Group Inc., the top U.S. insurer by revenue, isn’t budgeting for additional costs to treat H1N1 next year, Chief Financial Officer Mike Mikan said last week at an investor conference in New York.
The swine flu added about $110 million in costs for the Minnetonka, Minn.-based insurer in the second and third quarters of 2009, Mikan said. While it’s too soon to estimate its effect on the fourth quarter, a run-up in cases in late October was “hopefully the peak,” he said.
About 22 million Americans were sickened and 3,900 died by mid-October, according to the most recent CDC estimates. People develop immunity after they recover from illness or take the vaccine being distributed across the U.S. Seasonal flu kills about 36,000 people a year, with the majority of deaths in people older than age 80.
H1N1 influenza puts pregnant women, young people, and those with chronic health conditions such as asthma and diabetes at greater risk, with about 90 percent of deaths occurring among those younger than 64, according to the CDC.
So far, adults have been relatively free of swine flu, especially those older than 65, Longini said.
The number of hospitalizations and deaths will continue to climb even if the worst of the pandemic has passed, the CDC’s Anne Schuchat said recently. The CDC reported 27 children died with laboratory-confirmed cases of H1N1 in the week ended Nov. 21, the biggest seven-day toll since the outbreak began. About 200 children have died since the virus was first identified in April; that’s roughly twice the number in a typical flu season.
The swine flu vaccine took longer to deliver than U.S. health officials had anticipated in July.
Most seasonal flu vaccines are made by taking versions of the three most-commonly circulating influenza strains and growing the virus in millions of chicken eggs. The egg-based process has been blamed for delays in this year’s pandemic vaccine, and U.S. officials have pledged to increase production times by funding experimental manufacturing techniques.
“We were working to squeeze every last bit of efficiency and dependability out of a safe, but outdated technology,” Sebelius said. &#8226