Accordint to usatoday.com vaccine for the H1N1 flu won't be widely available until November — a month later than first thought — and some states are expecting delays to last until December.
"Ten days ago or two weeks ago it was thought end of October" that lots of vaccine would be available, said Donn Moyer of the Washington State Department of Health. Now health officials are hearing "the beginning or middle of November."
The CDC's Anne Schuchat said Tuesday that states had ordered 10.8 million of the 12.8 million available doses of vaccine. The CDC had expected to receive up to 40 million doses by the end of October, but last week it announced the number would be closer to 28 million to 30 million. "By November, there will be a lot of vaccine out there," Schuchat said. The agency says it expects to eventually have vaccine for everyone who wants it.
"I wish we had more than we have right now, but I do want to let you know that we do have more coming out every day," Schuchat said.
"The vaccine's in a race against the virus, and right now the virus is winning," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "I just had three meetings canceled because people were sick."
It's not that the government hasn't done everything it could to get the vaccine made, he said. "They've just overpromised on when the vaccine is going to get here."
H1N1 Flu Vaccine
Swine Flu Is 'Shooting Up'
According to health officials child deaths from the new virus, identified in April as a global epidemic and named swine flu were 'shooting up" in the United States. The CDC doesn't have an exact count of all swine flu deaths and hospitalizations, but existing reports suggest more than 600 have died and more than 9,000 have been hospitalized. Health officials believe millions of Americans have caught the virus. The regular flu kills between 46 and 88 children a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That suggests deaths from the new H1N1 virus could dramatically outpace children's deaths from seasonal flu, if swine flu continues to spread as it has.
CDC officials say 10 more states, a total of 37, now have widespread swine flu. A week ago, reports suggested that cases might be leveling off and even falling in some areas of the country, but that did not turn out to be an enduring national trend.
"We are seeing more illness, more hospitalizations, and more deaths," the CDC's Dr. Anne Schuchat said at a press conference Friday.