The H1N1 pandemic is over and the global outbreak turned out to be much less severe than was feared just over a year ago, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said today.
WHO director-general Margaret Chan once again rebutted criticism that the United Nations agency had hyped the first pandemic in more than 40 years, whose mildness left some Western governments holding huge stockpiles of unused vaccines.
The Hong Kong public health expert said the world had been lucky the H1N1 virus had not mutated into a more deadly form and that a safe vaccine developed in record time remained effective against it.
“We are now moving into the post-pandemic period. The new H1N1 virus has largely run its course,” Chan (picture) said.
Pandemic status: Students quarantined in China chat with a health worker in Beijing
Drug companies manipulated the World Health Organisation into downgrading its definition of a pandemic so they could cash in on a swine flu outbreak, it is claimed.
An inquiry heard yesterday that the WHO allegedly softened its criteria for declaring a H1N1 flu pandemic last spring - just weeks before announcing there was a worldwide outbreak.
Critics said the decision was driven by pharmaceutical companies desperate to recoup the billions of pounds they had invested in researching and developing pandemic vaccines after the bird flu scares in 2006 and 2007.
As a result, millions of people have been vaccinated against a mild illness, and money that could have been used to prevent and treat major killers such as heart disease has been squandered.
The claims, which emerged during the first of several Council of Europe hearings into the handling of the swine flu pandemic, were strongly rejected by the WHO.
Following the organisation's declaration of a pandemic, the Department of Health warned of 65,000 deaths, set up a special advice line and website, and suspended normal rules so anti-flu drugs could be given without prescription.
But with just 250 or so deaths in Britain and 14,000 worldwide, the WHO is being asked to account for its actions.
The Government is now trying to off-load millions of jabs it ordered at the height of the scare. Sources say it is even considering giving some doses away for free.
Wolfgang Wodarg, former head of health at the Council of Europe, the Strasbourg-based 'senate'
responsible for the European Court of Human Rights, said vaccine contracts were put in place in 2007, when it was feared the more lethal bird flu virus would mutate into human form.
Drug companies, which spent up to £2.5billion developing a vaccine, then pushed their interests within the WHO, leading to the definition of a pandemic being softened and an outbreak declared.
He told the hearing: 'It was stated in panic- stricken terms that this was a flu that could threaten humanity and a great number of humans could fall ill.
'This is why billions of dollars of medications were bought.
Dr Wodarg, an expert on the spread of disease, said that the change in definition made it possible for a worldwide pandemic to be declared and for the pharmaceutical companies to cash in.
Also giving evidence, Professor Ulrich Keil, a WHO adviser on heart disease, said the decision had led to a 'gigantic misallocation' of health budgets.
'We know the great killers are hypertension, smoking, high cholesterol, high body mass index, physical inactivity and low fruit and vegetable intake,' he said.
'In spite of all these facts, governments instead wasted huge amounts of money by investing in pandemic scenarios whose evidence base is weak.'
But Dr Kieji Fukuda, the WHO's top flu expert, rejected the allegations. 'We do not wait until (these global virus outbreaks) have developed and we see that lots of people are dying,' he said.
'What we try to do is take preventive actions. Our purpose is to try to provide guidance, to reduce harm.'
Ontario has become the first province to delay seasonal influenza vaccines to most residents because of the threat posed by swine flu.
The decision, announced Thursday, comes as public health officials across the country are reconsidering their immunization plans in light of unpublished Canadian studies that suggest earlier seasonal flu shots raise the risk of contracting the pandemic H1N1 flu virus.
“Is it typical that we adjust our programs?” said Arlene King, Ontario's chief medical officer of health. “No, it isn't typical, but we are not dealing with a typical flu season this year.”
Ontario's program is based on a calculation that swine flu will sicken more people than seasonal influenza this fall and winter. Despite hopes for a pan-Canadian vaccination strategy, the province's approach is different than those in other provinces.
Parents panicked over whether their sick children might have swine flu are unnecessarily clogging Houston's emergency rooms, and supplies of the most popular flu symptom-fighting drug aren't meeting the region's demand, health officials said Thursday.
Waiting rooms at both children's hospitals in the Texas Medical Center are packed at levels typically seen in January, the peak of traditional flu season, officials said. Texas Children's Hospital opened an outdoor assessment center under a tent Wednesday afternoon to handle a 40 percent increase in patients. Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital has had an equivalent increase in flu patients, spokeswoman Jennifer Hart said, and there's been a significant uptick at Memorial Hermann's community hospitals.
Clinicians say the scene is similar to what happened in the spring, when the H1N1, also known as swine flu, broke out in Mexico and was transmitted across the globe. Children and young adults are especially at risk, having the highest rates of hospitalization and deaths.
Meanwhile, federal health officials on Thursday said the first swine flu vaccinations should be available in the coming weeks, though there won't initially be enough for everyone to be treated.
“We are likely to have some initial doses available the first full week in October,” said U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
Sebelius said 6 million to 7 million doses will be available in that initial batch. Priority will be given to those considered most vulnerable, including children, pregnant women and health workers.
By mid-October, roughly 40 million doses will be distributed, officials said. And every week thereafter, 10 million to 20 million doses will roll out across America.
The federal government has purchased 250 million vaccines, “enough for everyone in America who wants a vaccine,” Sebelius said.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that the first round of swine flu vaccine could be ready by early October
The nation's first round of swine flu shots could begin sooner than expected, with some vaccine available as early as the first week of October, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Sunday.
Sebelius said she is confident the vaccine will be available early enough to beat the peak of the expected flu season this fall and that early doses are intended for health care workers and other high-priority groups.
"We're on track to have an ample supply rolling by the middle of October. But we may have some early vaccine as early as the first full week in October. We'll get the vaccine out the door as fast as it rolls off the production line," she told ABC's "This Week."
The possibility of early shots follows encouraging news from last week about the swine flu vaccine. Researchers have discovered that one dose instead of two could be enough for healthy adults, and protection could begin once vaccinated within 10 days instead of three weeks.
"That's great, which means we'll have a lot more vaccine," she said. "We also have seen a robust immune response within 10 days, instead of three weeks as was feared."
Sebelius said the vaccine doses will be distributed immediately to designated locations across the country once they are available.
"Every state has a plan saying these are the sites to get the vaccine as quickly as possible into people's arms. That's where the distribution will go," she said.
"So, the first week in October, we expect some of the vaccine to begin to roll, and by mid-October, to have the kind of supplies we were talking about. But we may have some available earlier. And we'll get it out to states as fast as it comes off the production lines," Sebelius said.
One dose means tight supplies of H1N1 vaccine won't be stretched so badly. Had it taken twice that dose, or two shots apiece, half as many people could have received the vaccine.
The winter flu vaccine is widely available now, and health authorities urged people last week to get shots now before swine flu shots start arriving.
In addition to concerns about swine flu, doctors also expect some garden-variety flu this fall as well, an illness that typically kills 36,000 Americans and hospitalizes 200,000 each year.
The officials expect about 50 million doses of swine flu vaccine to reach government warehouses by Oct. 15, and 20 million more to be ready each week after that until 195 million is reached.
Then those lots must be shipped to health centers, schools and other vaccination sites, people must be injected, and each must develop immunity. Immune responses are different in each individual, but the clinical trials suggest that most will be protected after 8 to 10 days.
So if the epidemic’s peak comes in late October, millions of people are likely to catch the flu before the vaccine is available.
“A month would have made a huge difference,” said Ira M. Longini Jr., an author of a report by an epidemic-modeling team at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and the University of Washington.
If one shot turns out to be protective in children and if the flu peaks in late December, as the 1968 Hong Kong flu did, “we could be O.K.,” Dr. Longini said. “But that’s a lot of ifs.”
In response, federal officials said there was no way to tell whether the pessimistic models would be right, since flu peaks at different times in different regions each year.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius"We're on track to have an ample supply rolling by the middle of October. But we may have some early vaccine as early as the first full week in October. We'll get the vaccine out the door as fast as it rolls off the production line," she told ABC's "This Week."The city has offered every school kid a free swine flu vaccine when it becomes available.
The winter flu vaccine is widely available now, and health authorities urged people last week to get shots now before swine flu vaccines start arriving.
----------------------
Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Sunday said the United States now expects to receive the first batch of swine flu vaccine in early October, a few weeks earlier than expected."The first week in October, we expect some of the vaccine to begin to roll," Sebelius said.On Friday, the health secretary said clinical trails had shown a single dose of the vaccine was enough to ensure immunity within 10 days.
-----------------------
A White House panel is warning that the H1N1 flu virus could infect up to half of the American population in the coming months ad may lead to as many as 90,000 deaths
A dose of the experimental vaccine for the H1N1 flu virus is prepared at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, in August.-
Mass vaccination against swine flu may begin in Australia within a month, health officials said, heralding one of the world’s biggest public health exercises.
Two million doses from Melbourne-based CSL Ltd. will be ready by the end of this month, enabling the program to commence once interim data from human trials have been assessed in early September, Australia’s Health Minister Nicola Roxon said today.
- Australia has ordered 21 million doses of swine flu vaccine, one for each person, with mass vaccinations to start nationally within weeks, the government said on Thursday.
“It’s absolutely the right thing to do, no question,” Lorena Brown, professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Melbourne, said in a telephone interview. “We don’t have any preexisting immunity, with the exception of the elderly who might have a bit, so the vaccine will hopefully halt the spread.”
NORTHERN hemisphere countries have so far ordered more than one billion doses of H1N1 flu vaccine, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday, sparking warnings over shortages.
Some countries - notably Greece, The Netherlands, Canada and Israel - have ordered enough double doses to inoculate their entire populations.
Others, such as Germany, the United States, Britain and France, have put in orders that would cover between 30 and 78 per cent of people.
Pandemic vaccine orders put in by northern hemisphere countries stand at over one billion,' WHO spokesman Melinda Henry told AFP.
In July, the WHO said that the 25 drug companies which had announced their intention to manufacture vaccines could crank out up to 94 million doses per week starting in mid-October.
The global health body revised these numbers sharply downward when the top half-dozen vaccine makers - accounting for 85 per cent of global production - reported that the swine flu strains with which they were working did not reproduce as quickly as expected.
'The current vaccine strain would only yield 25 to 50 per cent' of the original estimate, as low as 23 million doses per week, said Ms Henry.
Clinical tests have not yet confirmed whether new strains under development will produce higher yields, and initial results for at least one, reviewed by WHO on Tuesday, are not encouraging.
The World Health Organisation stuck on Tuesday to its statement that about two billion people could catch H1N1 influenza by the time the flu pandemic ends.
"By the end of a pandemic, anywhere between 15-45 percent of a population will have been infected by the new pandemic virus," WHO spokeswoman Aphaluck Bhatiasevi said in a statement.
The WHO's latest update on July 27 said a total of 816 people had died from H1N1, while the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases, including deaths, was 134,503 -- a figure well below the likely real total of infections which may already be in the millions, according to health experts.
WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said the agency hoped to give an update on its vaccine plans later this week. Leading flu vaccine makers include Sanofi-Aventis (SASY.PA), Novartis (NOVN.VX), Baxter (BAX.N), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L) and Solvay (SOLB.BR).
- In this video, Dr. Joe Bresee with the CDC Influenza Division describes swine flu - its signs and symptoms, how it's transmitted, medicines to treat it, steps people can take to protect themselves from it, and what people should do if they become ill.
---
-This podcast discusses the use of antiviral drugs for treating and preventing the H1N1 flu virus.
