For months the mantra of the U.S. government has been that, once a pandemic begins, it would `take up to six months before we had a vaccine’ for Avian flu. Implied in this statement is that it could be less than six months, but not longer. And also implied is that there would be enough vaccine to inoculate everyone at that time.
Both of my readers by now know I have scoffed at this little piece of spin regularly in my blog. In fact, I have railed against this disinformation almost as often as I slam the WHO for denying H2H transmission of the virus. This is, I’ve maintained, `happy news’, designed to placate the masses.
Yesterday, Michael Leavitt, Secretary of HHS finally `qualified’ the government’s assertions about the likely availability of vaccines.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0607birdflu0607.html
States to ration bird-flu shots
Health secretary outlines vaccine plans for areas
Lauran Neergaard
Associated Press
Jun. 7, 2006 12:00 AM
WASHINGTON - States will get to decide how to ration scarce vaccine if bird flu triggers a worldwide epidemic, the nation's health secretary said Tuesday, a decision that means where people live could determine their protection.
"Let's acknowledge the fact that for the first six months of any pandemic, we're not going to have a vaccine," Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said.
Once doses start being produced, "this is a battle that'll be fought in thousands of communities simultaneously; what's working in one community may not work as well in another," Leavitt said in a joint interview with Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns.
In case a human pandemic occurs, the government is stockpiling both anti-flu medication and a small amount of vaccine that might give some protection until inoculations that are a direct genetic match to the illness could be brewed. That will take six months, even longer to produce enough for everyone, Leavitt warned.
Leavitt said supplies will be divided among the states according to their population.
"You could make a case for many different segments of the community being a priority," he said. "You could also see different situations in each state that would warrant those decisions being different.
Yes, I know the secretary’s statements are still ambiguous, and leave open several big questions, but this is a start.
First, he’s dispensed with the `up to six months to produce’ nonsense and replaced it with `there won’t be any vaccine’ in the first six months.
But more importantly, he acknowledged there would be inadequate supplies of vaccine, even after six months. That vaccines would have to be rationed, and that it would be up to the individual states to determine who gets the vaccine.
It would have been nice if he could have provided some numbers, a guestimate of how many doses of vaccine might be available at the end of six months. And nicer still if he would have told us how many doses could be produced in a year. Or over two years. No doubt, he is in possession of these numbers.
But the logistics of vaccine production and distribution in this country make for pretty dismal reading. The numbers are likely to be very low after six months, and it would probably take two years at least to make enough for everyone.
With multiple clades (versions) of the virus in the wild, and the propensity for flu viruses to mutate rapidly, the prospects of any effective vaccine for the masses are, from all that I’ve read, fairly remote.
If the H5N1 virus can hold off for a few years and not go pandemic, there are some encouraging new vaccine manufacturing procedures in the works that could drastically shorten production time. There is even work ongoing on a universal vaccine that could protect against a wide range of flu viruses. And both are worth pursuing, even at this late date.
We just have to hope the virus is willing to wait a few years, and give us time to catch up.
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