Influenza vaccine status revealed

The status of pandemic influenza vaccine availability around the world has been updated by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

In May, the group forecast that global production capacity for pandemic vaccines would be around five million per year.

This has now been decreased to an estimate of three billion doses per year, as new information on production yield has been gathered.

However, WHO believes that this lower figure is not overly problematic as it has been concluded that a single dose of the vaccine is able to provide immunity from the illness in most adults and older children.

Therefore, the number of people who can be protected by the projected supply of vaccines is double what was previously thought.

Nevertheless, WHO is still calling for more supplies, as current levels will not cover the world population of 6.8 billion.

Pandemic vaccines have now been licensed in the US, Australia, China and Hungary, with other European countries expected to follow shortly.

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