Swine Flu Vaccinations Start as Officials Attack Myths:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/us/07flu.html?_r=2

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: October 6, 2009

As children received swine flu vaccine for the first time on Tuesday, federal health officials attacked popular myths about the pandemic and the vaccine designed to stop it.

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an afternoon news conference that the most common misperceptions are that this flu should ever be called a “mild disease,” that the vaccine is untested and that it has arrived too late.

Flu is widespread across the country and some hospitals are getting so many emergency room visits that they have set up triage tents, but Dr. Frieden said one problem that planners had feared has yet to emerge: no intensive care units have had more patients than ventilators — something that did happen in one Canadian province last spring.

Children in several states, including New York, received nasal spray vaccines Tuesday — shots are due to begin next week — and all 50 states have started sending vaccine orders. Of the 2.4 million doses expected to ship this week, 2.2 million have been spoken for, Dr. Frieden said. Orders are expected to increase rapidly as states rent more refrigerated storage space and schedule vaccination drives.

Myths and worries about the vaccine have spread on talk radio and anti-vaccine Web sites, but Dr. Frieden seemed to debunk them on Tuesday.

While most people recover, he said, “on average, flu is not a ‘mild’ illness — it can make you pretty sick, knock you out for a day or two or three.” And in rare cases, he emphasized, it kills.

He rejected suggestions that the new vaccine is untested. Its seed strain was created, grown and purified in the same slow way as seasonal flu shots, which hundreds of millions of people have had, and rapid clinical trials last month showed the same lack of serious side effects.

He conceded that the flu returned in force faster than a vaccine could be ready, but argued that it is not too late. Even in places like New York City that were epicenters of the spring outbreak, epidemiologists believe that only 5 percent to 10 percent of the population was infected.

“That leaves 90 to 95 percent of the population still susceptible,” he said. “It’s too soon to say it’s too late. We don’t know what the rest of the season will bring.”

China began its swine flu vaccinations on Sept. 21, the first country to do so. Of the first 39,000 Chinese to get shots, only four had side effects, muscle cramps and headaches, a World Health Organization spokesman said Tuesday, wire services reported.

An 18-year-old Tibetan woman became the first swine flu death on the mainland under Beijing’s control, China’s health ministry announced Tuesday; there have been 28 swine flu deaths in Hong Kong, which did not use the rigid quarantines the mainland did.

New York City held an orchestrated kickoff to its swine flu vaccinations Tuesday at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx.

Brandon Marty, 13, seemed nervous as he went first, taking a squirt in each nostril as city officials applauded. “It felt good and cold,” Brandon said afterward.

His sister, Ashley, 9, was next, followed by Dr. Philip O. Ozuah, chairman of pediatrics at the hospital. They were chosen because they represented two high-risk groups set to get vaccine first: children and medical workers.

Actually, officials said, a few doses were given on Monday without any fanfare from the first batch of 68,000.

Dr. Thomas A. Farley, the city’s new health commissioner, said he expected a vaccine shortage until the end of the month, when a batch of 1.2 million is scheduled to arrive.

Public school officials hope to begin giving vaccines in elementary schools at the end of the month and will send consent forms to parents. Middle and high school students will be offered shots on weekends.

Joel Stonington contributed reporting.