S'pore buys 1m H5N1 shots

[beast]

SINGAPORE has bought a million doses of a vaccine to protect the people here against the H5N1 bird flu.

The vaccine will arrive by the end of the year.

The bug is particularly scary for Singapore, which sits next to Indonesia, the country with the most cases (163) and deaths (135) from the virus. Vietnam, with the next highest number of cases (115) and deaths (58), is also nearby.

Both countries have already had one death each this year.

Unlike the H1N1 pandemic that swept the globe last year, the H5N1 bug could be a bigger killer by far if it mutates.

Of the 486 people reported to have been infected by H5N1 since 2003, 287 have died. This works out to an almost six-in-10 death rate.


  http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_501176.html



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not much information here - :cow:

[beast]

H5N1


Vaccines have been formulated against several of the avian H5N1 influenza varieties. Vaccination of poultry against the ongoing H5N1 epizootic is widespread in certain countries. Some vaccines also exist for use in humans, and others are in testing, but none have been made available to civilian populations, nor produced in quantities sufficient to protect more than a tiny fraction of the Earth's population in the event of an H5N1 pandemic.

Three H5N1 vaccines for humans have been licensed as of June 2008:[87]

    * Sanofi Pasteur's vaccine approved by the United States in April 2007,
    * GlaxoSmithKline's vaccine Pandemrix approved by the European Union in May 2008, and
    * CSL Limited's vaccine approved by Australia in June 2008.

All are produced in eggs and would require many months to be altered to a pandemic version.

H5N1 continually mutates, meaning vaccines based on current samples of avian H5N1 cannot be depended upon to work in the case of a future pandemic of H5N1. While there can be some cross-protection against related flu strains, the best protection would be from a vaccine specifically produced for any future pandemic flu virus strain. Dr. Daniel Lucey, co-director of the Biohazardous Threats and Emerging Diseases graduate program at Georgetown University, has made this point, "There is no H5N1 pandemic so there can be no pandemic vaccine." However, "pre-pandemic vaccines" have been created; are being refined and tested; and do have some promise both in furthering research and preparedness for the next pandemic. Vaccine manufacturing companies are being encouraged to increase capacity so that if a pandemic vaccine is needed, facilities will be available for rapid production of large amounts of a vaccine specific to a new pandemic strain.

Problems with H5N1 vaccine production include:

    * lack of overall production capacity
    * lack of surge production capacity (it is impractical to develop a system that depends on hundreds of millions of 11-day old specialized eggs on a standby basis)
    * the pandemic H5N1 might be lethal to chickens
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_vaccine#H5N1