H1N1 vaccines should offer broad protection even if the pandemic flu virus mutates as it spreads, a top World Health Organisation expert said today.
Marie-Paule Kieny, director of the WHO's vaccine research programme, said health workers should get immunised first when the shots begin to be distributed, as early as this month.
"The consensus is that the first doses will be available to governments for use in September," she said.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week that it was unlikely
the vaccines would be available before October.
About 30 candidate vaccines are being worked on in the rush to combat the flu strain that first emerged in Mexico and the United States and then moved around the world. The WHO declared it a global pandemic in June.
"No countries will have vaccine for everyone from the first day it is available for use," Ms Kieny said.
The pharmaceutical industry will used tiered pricing for the governments buying H1N1 vaccines, charging rich countries $10 to $20 per dose, middle-income countries half that amount and low-income countries half that again, according to Ms Kieny.
"These are ballpark figures but this is the order of magnitude," she said.
She said "a complete clinical evaluation" of H1N1 vaccines was not necessary, but trials were needed to know whether one or two doses are necessary, whether some people may be at risk from the shot, and whether it can be delivered in a mixture with
other vaccines.
US researchers said this week that H1N1 appeared unlikely to mix with other circulating flu viruses into a "superbug." Ms Kieny said the new strain would have to mutate in a significant way for the vaccines in the works to be rendered ineffective.
"Although the virus can mutate, we hope that there will be enough cross-protection through recognition of the new virus. But if the virus changes too much, we will need new vaccines," she told the WHO Bulletin.
She stressed that it was neither possible nor necessary to vaccinate every person against the H1N1 flu, which has killed some pregnant women and people with other diseases such as diabetes but caused manageable flu symptoms in most patients.
"We should not be 'hypnotised' by vaccines," she said. "There are other measures, such as social distancing, school closure, avoidance of large gatherings, antibiotics and personal hygiene," she said. "This is not like rabies, which is 100 per cent fatal. We are talking about a disease from which most people recover very well."