Bloomberg — Swine flu vaccines under development by drugmakers may not provide immunity until the last week of November, too late to hold off outbreaks triggered by infected students returning to schools in the U.S. and Europe.

Just 45 million of 195 million doses ordered for the U.S. will be delivered by mid-October, said health officials who lowered their estimates yesterday. The vaccine will probably require two shots given three weeks apart, and the body won’t produce antibodies for two additional weeks, according to an Aug. 7 report by the Department of Health and Human Services.

H1N1 has reached more than 170 countries and territories in the four months since being identified, the Geneva-based World Health Organization said.

Protection Priorities

Authorities want to ensure adequate supplies to protect health-care workers, pregnant women, people at risk of developing severe complications from flu and children, whose close contact in tightly packed schoolrooms and in other social settings makes them the biggest spreaders of the virus.

Part of the U.S. plan to vaccinate children is to encourage state and local health departments to set up school-based vaccine clinics. In the U.K., most shots will be given by family doctors and nurses who provide routine health care including seasonal flu shots, according to the Department of Health.

Schools that arrange in-house immunizations will face logistical hurdles, said Mel Riddile, the National Association of Secondary School Principals’ associate director for high school services in the U.S. Riddile, a former principal at a Fairfax County, Virginia, high school, said it typically took a month just for all 2,500 students to turn in their emergency medical information forms at the beginning of the school year.

Along with hand washing, washable keyboards are a great way to help stay protected against viruses, such as the flu. Since keyboards are the other thing you touch all day, being able to wash and disinfect them helps decrease harmful germ contamination. Get a washable keyboard at WETKEYS.com. 

Swine Flu Shots May Be Too Little, Too Late to Halt Outbreaks

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