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| A shot too late | | Little point vaccinating against swine flu now |
| Business Standard / New Delhi Mar 12, 2010, 00:15 IST |
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The government’s plan to vaccinate people against the H1N1 virus is a bad idea since the virus, which caused a pandemic last year, is now ebbing and the number of fresh cases being reported every day is pretty near negligible. And, with temperatures rising as summer approaches, the spread of the virus will be limited even more. In which case, if the government does go ahead with the mass vaccination for the frontline health staff that typically deal with swine flu cases and are, therefore, the most vulnerable group, it will probably just be because it has imported 1.5 million doses of the swine flu vaccine — these have now been found safe to use and have been cleared for use. And, by the time the vaccine is distributed to all hospitals and the frontline health staff are identified for vaccination, the summer will have set in firmly and will automatically kill the virus. Given this, and the possibility that the vaccines could have some side effects, it is best not to use them right now, and instead store them for when they are really needed.
Though H1NI is on the decline right now, its reintroduction cannot be ruled out, especially by passengers flying in from overseas. According to the latest update on global H1N1 pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the virus still persists in the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere as well as in South-East Asian countries such as Thailand and Myanmar. The pandemic, which spanned 213 countries, has resulted in 16,450 deaths so far. In India, despite having nearly 30,000 laboratory-confirmed cases and many more unreported cases of swine flu, there have been only 1,387 human deaths attributable to it so far. The real danger is from the possible mutation of the virus into a relatively more deadly form by winter, when the weather conditions will also be ripe for it to strike once again. If the virus does mutate, of course, the present vaccines may be useless and we will need to develop a new strain of vaccine to deal with the mutated virus. In which case, not only do we need to remain vigilant and be prepared for timely action to cope with such a contingency, we also need to keep up on the research and development front. The good thing is that, apart from the fact that a source of the vaccine has been identified, the indigenous vaccines developed by three firms are also likely to be ready for use in the next few months, and these will cost much less than the imported vaccines. The fact that indigenous research is going on also makes it more that much more likely that a vaccine can be developed to take care of a mutated virus.
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