| Swine Flu Vaccinations
Start as Officials Attack Myths
As children received swine flu vaccine for the first time on
Tuesday, federal health officials attacked popular myths about
the pandemic and the vaccine designed to stop it.
Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, said in an afternoon news conference that the
most common misperceptions are that this flu should ever be called
a “mild disease,” that the vaccine is untested and that
it has arrived too late.
Flu is widespread across the country and some hospitals are getting
so many emergency room visits that they have set up triage tents,
but Dr. Frieden said one problem that planners had feared has
yet to emerge: no intensive care units have had more patients
than ventilators — something that did happen in one Canadian
province last spring.
Children in several states, including New York, received nasal
spray vaccines Tuesday — shots are due to begin next week
— and all 50 states have started sending vaccine orders.
Of the 2.4 million doses expected to ship this week, 2.2 million
have been spoken for, Dr. Frieden said. Orders are expected to
increase rapidly as states rent more refrigerated storage space
and schedule vaccination drives.
Myths and worries about the vaccine have spread on talk radio
and anti-vaccine Web sites, but Dr. Frieden seemed to debunk them
on Tuesday.
While most people recover, he said, “on average, flu is
not a ‘mild’ illness — it can make you pretty sick,
knock you out for a day or two or three.” And in rare cases,
he emphasized, it kills.
He rejected suggestions that the new vaccine is untested. Its
seed strain was created, grown and purified in the same slow way
as seasonal flu shots, which hundreds of millions of people have
had, and rapid clinical trials last month showed the same lack
of serious side effects.
He conceded that the flu returned in force faster than a vaccine
could be ready, but argued that it is not too late. Even in places
like New York City that were epicenters of the spring outbreak,
epidemiologists believe that only 5 percent to 10 percent of the
population was infected.
“That leaves 90 to 95 percent of the population still susceptible,”
he said. “It’s too soon to say it’s too late. We
don’t know what the rest of the season will bring.”
China began its swine flu vaccinations on Sept. 21, the first
country to do so. Of the first 39,000 Chinese to get shots, only
four had side effects, muscle cramps and headaches, a World Health
Organization spokesman said Tuesday, wire services reported.
An 18-year-old Tibetan woman became the first swine flu death
on the mainland under Beijing’s control, China’s health
ministry announced Tuesday; there have been 28 swine flu deaths
in Hong Kong, which did not use the rigid quarantines the mainland
did.
New York City held an orchestrated kickoff to its swine flu vaccinations
Tuesday at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx.
Brandon Marty, 13, seemed nervous as he went first, taking a
squirt in each nostril as city officials applauded. “It felt
good and cold,” Brandon said afterward.
His sister, Ashley, 9, was next, followed by Dr. Philip O. Ozuah,
chairman of pediatrics at the hospital. They were chosen because
they represented two high-risk groups set to get vaccine first:
children and medical workers.
Actually, officials said, a few doses were given on Monday without
any fanfare from the first batch of 68,000.
Dr. Thomas A. Farley, the city’s new health commissioner,
said he expected a vaccine shortage until the end of the month,
when a batch of 1.2 million is scheduled to arrive.
Public school officials hope to begin giving vaccines in elementary
schools at the end of the month and will send consent forms to
parents. Middle and high school students will be offered shots
on weekends.
Reference Sources 133
October 7, 2009
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