UK plans swine flu vaccine for every citizen
By Stephen C. Webster
Published: July 12, 2009
Updated 5 hours ago
With just 15 of its citizens dead from the virus, the United Kingdom is preparing to undertake the largest vaccination program of the last 50 years, with a vaccine for swine flu that may undergo clinical trials as short as five days, according to published reports.
The first round of vaccines will be available in the UK by early autumn, a government spokesman said. It will be administered two doses per person.
No reports have yet suggested the vaccine will be mandatory.
“People are still making decisions over this, but we want to get cracking before we get a second wave, which is traditionally far more virulent,” Peter Holden of the British Medical Association told ITN. “If the virus does (mutate), it can get a lot more nasty, and the idea is to give people immunity. But the sheer logistics of dealing with 60 million people can’t be underestimated.”
Approximately 10,000 UK citizens have been infected with the virus, the report adds.
The rate of infection has the European Medicines Agency scrambling to piece together a reliable vaccine before the so-called “second wave” of the H1N1 virus surfaces.
“The first patients in the queue for the jab - being supplied to the UK by GSK and Baxter Healthcare - may understandably be a little nervous at any possible side effects,” reported The Times Online. “A mass vaccination campaign against swine flu in America was halted in the 1970s after some people suffered Guillain-Barré syndrome, a disorder of the nervous system.”
The paper added: “He said although swine flu was not causing serious illness in patients, health officials were eager to start a mass vaccination campaign, starting first on priority groups. First, the jabs would reduce the chances of a shortage of hospital beds because of people suffering from swine flu. Second, it would reduce the effect on the economy by ensuring workers were protected from the virus.”
British Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson told ITN that the UK is fortunate the H1N1 strain is not a human-born variant of the avian flu, which would produce “much higher levels of mortality.”
Safety concerns
Strangely enough, the company tasked with production of the vaccines, Baxter Healthcare, made headlines in February when a live avian flu virus escaped one of its Austrian laboratories inside a “vaccine,” which was only discovered after it killed an animal.
“The contaminated product, a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses and unlabeled H5N1 viruses, was supplied to an Austrian research company,” reported the Canadian Press. “The Austrian firm, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then sent portions of it to sub-contractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany.
The North American news service added: “The contamination incident, which is being investigated by the four European countries, came to light when the subcontractor in the Czech Republic inoculated ferrets with the product and they died. Ferrets shouldn’t die from exposure to human H3N2 flu viruses.”
Baxter “moved very quickly to sanitize and protect employees,” a spokesman told Bloomberg. “Labs have been sanitized, potentially contaminated materials have been destroyed and employees were tested and considered not to be at risk.”
Baxter Healthcare attributed the near-deadly lapse to human error, but failed to explain exactly how their subcontractor’s biosecurity protocols could completely fail. The 1977 Russian flu was started by an accidental laboratory release.
“[Baxter was also] in the news over a series of fatal allergic reactions among dialysis patients who used the blood thinner Heparin they manufactured,” noted science blog Effect Measure. “It turned out their heparin came from China and contained an adulterant, oversulfated chondroitin sulfate. Patients in six countries and over a dozen states in the US had serious adverse reactions and more than 80 deaths.”
Baxter later said its Heparin was not tainted and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was unable to precisely establish how the lethal compound found its way into the drug due to the supply chain’s reported complexity.
In May, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control gave Baxter a live H1N1 virus to speed the creation of a vaccine. The company said it hopes to complete development in July.
By Stephen C. Webster
Published: July 12, 2009
Updated 5 hours ago
With just 15 of its citizens dead from the virus, the United Kingdom is preparing to undertake the largest vaccination program of the last 50 years, with a vaccine for swine flu that may undergo clinical trials as short as five days, according to published reports.
The first round of vaccines will be available in the UK by early autumn, a government spokesman said. It will be administered two doses per person.
No reports have yet suggested the vaccine will be mandatory.
“People are still making decisions over this, but we want to get cracking before we get a second wave, which is traditionally far more virulent,” Peter Holden of the British Medical Association told ITN. “If the virus does (mutate), it can get a lot more nasty, and the idea is to give people immunity. But the sheer logistics of dealing with 60 million people can’t be underestimated.”
Approximately 10,000 UK citizens have been infected with the virus, the report adds.
The rate of infection has the European Medicines Agency scrambling to piece together a reliable vaccine before the so-called “second wave” of the H1N1 virus surfaces.
“The first patients in the queue for the jab - being supplied to the UK by GSK and Baxter Healthcare - may understandably be a little nervous at any possible side effects,” reported The Times Online. “A mass vaccination campaign against swine flu in America was halted in the 1970s after some people suffered Guillain-Barré syndrome, a disorder of the nervous system.”
The paper added: “He said although swine flu was not causing serious illness in patients, health officials were eager to start a mass vaccination campaign, starting first on priority groups. First, the jabs would reduce the chances of a shortage of hospital beds because of people suffering from swine flu. Second, it would reduce the effect on the economy by ensuring workers were protected from the virus.”
British Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson told ITN that the UK is fortunate the H1N1 strain is not a human-born variant of the avian flu, which would produce “much higher levels of mortality.”
Safety concerns
Strangely enough, the company tasked with production of the vaccines, Baxter Healthcare, made headlines in February when a live avian flu virus escaped one of its Austrian laboratories inside a “vaccine,” which was only discovered after it killed an animal.
“The contaminated product, a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses and unlabeled H5N1 viruses, was supplied to an Austrian research company,” reported the Canadian Press. “The Austrian firm, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then sent portions of it to sub-contractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany.
The North American news service added: “The contamination incident, which is being investigated by the four European countries, came to light when the subcontractor in the Czech Republic inoculated ferrets with the product and they died. Ferrets shouldn’t die from exposure to human H3N2 flu viruses.”
Baxter “moved very quickly to sanitize and protect employees,” a spokesman told Bloomberg. “Labs have been sanitized, potentially contaminated materials have been destroyed and employees were tested and considered not to be at risk.”
Baxter Healthcare attributed the near-deadly lapse to human error, but failed to explain exactly how their subcontractor’s biosecurity protocols could completely fail. The 1977 Russian flu was started by an accidental laboratory release.
“[Baxter was also] in the news over a series of fatal allergic reactions among dialysis patients who used the blood thinner Heparin they manufactured,” noted science blog Effect Measure. “It turned out their heparin came from China and contained an adulterant, oversulfated chondroitin sulfate. Patients in six countries and over a dozen states in the US had serious adverse reactions and more than 80 deaths.”
Baxter later said its Heparin was not tainted and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was unable to precisely establish how the lethal compound found its way into the drug due to the supply chain’s reported complexity.
In May, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control gave Baxter a live H1N1 virus to speed the creation of a vaccine. The company said it hopes to complete development in July.
