From MedPage Today from KevinMD:
A minimum of 3.4 million doses of vaccine against H1N1 pandemic flu will be available in the first week of October, the CDC said.
Those doses — all in the form of a live attenuated nasal spray vaccine — may be supplemented by some injectable vaccine, according to Jay Butler, MD, the chief of the agency’s 2009 H1N1 vaccine task force.
“Additional vaccine may be available as well,” Dr. Butler told reporters, “but 3.4 (million) is the hard number that we have right now.”
After the first week of October, additional vaccine will become available, he said, eventually reaching 20 million doses delivered each week until the end of the year.
Butler cautioned that getting the vaccine to patients is likely to be logistically challenging, especially in the first days. “The flow of vaccine the first week or two may be slower than what we would like,” he said.
The U.S. has ordered 195 million doses of pandemic flu vaccine from five companies, and four of the vaccines have now been licensed by the FDA. (See FDA Approves H1N1 Vaccines)
Filed under: Uncategorized
