Nearly a year after researchers identified the 2009 H1N1 virus, federal health officials are trying remain one step ahead of this unpredictable disease.
“It’s spring break. That’s when we had a lot of problems last year,” said Anne Schuchat, MD, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. “We have lots of international travelers. The southern hemisphere may be gearing up for their season.”
While battling the virus, doctors are also trying to dispel common perceptions of H1N1 as a mild flu. Seasonal influenza kills an average of 36 thousand people in the U.S. each year. H1N1 is blamed for 12 thousand deaths. However, H1N1 has a disproportionate impact on children.
“We think about five times more people under 65 died from the H1N1 virus than would typically die from seasonal flu,” Schuchat said. “In terms of people whose lives were really cut short unexpectedly, that was a theme of this pandemic.”
CDC officials are urging people who have not been vaccinated, to get the shots now. Finding vaccine should be easy, given the current surplus — estimated to be in the tens of millions of doses.
“We say that you need to have more than enough vaccine to have enough vaccine, because you want to have enough vaccine at every place in the distribution system,” Schuchat said. “I do expect that we’ll be discarding a lot of vaccine at the end of this season. And I think that’s better than running out.”
Current manufacturing technology in the U.S. grows flu vaccine inside chicken eggs. The product is safe and effective, but the process is slow and unpredictable — forcing public health officials to anticipate demand months in advance.
Researchers are working on technology to speed up the process by producing vaccine inside cells, or even at the molecular level. But they caution that such improvements could still be years away.
The biggest change Americans will notice this year, is the fall flu vaccine will combine H1N1 and seasonal flu strains. So, most people will only require one shot this year, instead of two. (Children under 10 receiving their first H1N1 immunization will likely still need two separate doses).
Federal health officials say lower vaccination rates may be behind a recent uptick in H1N1 activity in the Southeast.
Georgia, which has reported an increase in influenza-related hospitalizations over the past few weeks, ranks near the bottom of a list released today by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showing state by state statistics on the proportion of residents who received the H1N1 vaccine. An estimated 22.7 percent of Georgians in the initial target groups (children and other high risk individuals) got vaccinated.
Mississippi ranked lowest in this category with 19.4 percent, while vaccinations for target groups exceeded 50 percent in some New England states and reached as high as 57.5 in Rhode Island.
Overall vaccination rates (for persons aged 6 months and older) were 23.9 percent nationwide, with Rhode Island ranking highest (38.8 percent) and Mississippi lowest (12.9 percent).
The discrepancy may have more to do with the timing of the disease rather than any cultural factors. In Southern states, where the school season starts early, H1N1 activity peaked earlier than in many other parts of the country.
“They actually started to see flu increasing in August,” Schuchat said. “Then things were fairly quiet in October and November when the vaccine came around… And perhaps because they had early disease, there wasn’t as much interest in vaccination when the vaccine became available.”