A complicated list of who should get [swine] flu vaccine in the fall is now set. When the vaccine starts arriving in September, first in line will be pregnant women; the caretakers of infants; children and young adults; older people with chronic illness; and health-care workers. That's the advice of a 15-member committee of experts, which met all day Wednesday at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to advise the federal government on vaccine policy. The priority list names targeted groups and suggests the order in which they should be vaccinated. The results of this meeting will kick planning into high gear," said Pascale Wortley of the CDC's Immunization Services Division. "This is a watershed moment." All that's missing is the vaccine, knowledge of how well it works and the nitty-gritty details of how to deliver it to people's arms and noses. The vaccine will come in two forms: the traditional flu shot and a "live" vaccine squirted into the nose that contains a weakened version of the new virus. Some of the vaccine will be stored in multi-dose vials containing thimerosal, an antibacterial additive that contains mercury. But there will also be single-dose syringes without thimerosal, a substance that some assert is harmful to children. Among the many unanswered questions is whether two doses will be necessary to provide full protection, how close in time two shots can be given and how big the dose will be. Vaccination programs may start before the answers are known.
Latest
Latest News
Each news summary is created according to strict standards. Here's how we do it.
Each summary is created using a consistent editorial procedure. The target length is approximately 16 lines of 11-point Arial text in a 650-pixel-wide column. Up to 25% of a summary may be set in bold to emphasize the most important ideas. Summaries are composed of verbatim excerpts presented in the same sequence as they appear in the original news source, with very minor editorial additions. Where material has been omitted between excerpts, the omission is indicated with ellipses (...). Any words added by an editor for clarity or context appear in [brackets]. Our original news editor was Fred Burks. Tod Fletcher edited most summaries from 2007 through 2014, and Mark Bailey has served as news editor since 2014.