US health officials have spotted no concerns to date, said Dr. Bruce Gellin, head of the National Vaccine Program Office.
A specially appointed working group of independent experts will track the vaccine’s safety, too. Although the group will deliberate in private meetings, starting today, its charge is to raise a red flag if members feel the feds miss anything.
“Given the rapidity with which this particular vaccine was rolled out, there seems to be an extra-special obligation to make sure things remain as uncomplicated as they have in the past,’’ said Dr. Marie McCormick of the Harvard School of Public Health, who chairs the working group.
Vaccinations against the new flu, which scientists call the 2009 H1N1 strain, have begun more slowly than the Obama administration had hoped, with long lines for the nearly 27 million doses sent around the country so far. More is on the way, even as swine flu cases and hospitalizations continue to rise.
Presidential adviser David Axelrod said yesterday that the manufacturers of the vaccine were wrong when they advised the administration earlier this year that they would have 40 million doses ready near the end of October. Instead, only 28 million doses of vaccine were available.
Axelrod said the government will catch up to the demand for the vaccine within a week, when 10 million new doses become available.
How many people ultimately line up for shots depends in part on public confidence in the vaccine’s safety.
While vaccine side effects always are monitored, the H1N1 inoculations are getting extra scrutiny in part because the last mass vaccinations against a very different swine flu, in 1976, were marred by reports of a rare paralyzing condition, Guillain-Barre syndrome.
A report Friday in the British medical journal The Lancet said the intense monitoring will be crucial for an additional reason: separating normal disease rates from real vaccine risks. For example, about 2,500 miscarriages and 3,000 heart attacks occur every day in the United States, and some are sure to coincide with vaccination yet not be caused by it.
