Thursday, April 19, 2007

New avian flu vaccince is an "interim measure", but who gets the vaccine?

As Harriet mentioned in the last blog, only 45% of people who receive this new vaccine develop antibodies to the the virus...

Why is this important then? If a pandemic occurred, this vaccine isn't going to save the world. However, it may be useful if we can vaccinate at the very start of a human to human pandemic.
The more cases you can prevent or delay at the onset has huge implications for how many people are affected and how long you have to prepare.

But all the press releases and articles I've seen have only said this won't be available commercially and that the U.S. Govt. is stockpiling the vaccine. There's no word on what other countries may be able to access it and it's very unlikely that a human pandemic will start in the United States...

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