The World Health Organization’s influenza experts have finished a four-day meeting and decided that protection against H1N1 swine flu should be included in the next regular flu-season vaccine.
The virus causing the current swine-flu pandemic surfaced too late last year to be included in the most recent seasonal-flu vaccine, so a separate vaccine was ordered up. But next time around for the Northern Hemisphere flu season, WHO is recommending H1N1 to be one of the strains added to the new seasonal protection.
The flu experts for the U.N. health agency get together about eight months in advance of each cold season to decide which three strains should go into the latest seasonal-flu vaccine. They decided in September that the next Southern Hemisphere cocktail should include swine-flu protection. Here’s more from Associated Press and Agence France-Presse, and you can listen to the WHO briefing here.
Still to be decided is whether the H1N1 pandemic, declared in June, has reached its peak after killing more than 15,000 people. Reuters says WHO experts are supposed to come to a decision on that next Tuesday.
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