United States: According to the latest update, millions of doses of a new vaccine are being produced in the US in order to be prepared for the anticipated H5N1 bird flu virus spread.
The virus, which first appeared in wild birds in 1997, has been rising this year among dairy and poultry farms across the US.
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This year, 13 farmworkers contracted the virus, some complaining of eye redness and some coughing.
However, nobody landed seriously enough to be admitted to a hospital, even though, globally, half of the total number of people who contracted H5N1 in the past several years have died.
It is not transmissible from one person to another, like the flu, for example, and that is why health organizations are not in a state of mass panic yet, as the USA Today reported.
This is why also the federal government believes it’s unnecessary to vaccinate anybody against H5N1 yet, not even the farm workers who are most vulnerable to becoming infected by chickens or cows.
Officials preparing vaccination production
But behind the scenes, the officials are preparing at Seqirus’ sophisticated site in a biopharmaceutical cluster of Holly Springs.
Already, 4.8 million doses of a potential vaccine are stored in an unknown Seqirus distribution center, waiting to be delivered if needed.
According to Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary for preparedness and response for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “An exercise like this gives our partners a chance to exercise that muscle, to make sure that the manufacturing’s there,” as the USA Today reported.
During previous diseases, she continued to have sufficient vaccines produced on time to address individual cases and control the disease spread and has been the government’s “Achilles heel.”