WASHINGTON – A top U.S. health official told lawmakers that vaccines against seasonal flu likely to not protect against swine flu and that a vaccine against that deadly disease cannot be ready before September.
"If everything went great, production could lead to availability as early as September," Anne Schuchat, acting deputy director for science and public health program at the U..S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But "everything doesn't always go great," she warned the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Schuchat said there were "active efforts" to prepare for making the vaccine, but, when asked whether it would definitely be made, replied: "I don't believe that decision has been made yet."
Schuchat warned that scientists did not believe that vaccines against seasonal influenza, which kills 36,000 people each year, would protect against the "novel" virus now making headlines.
"We don't expect there to be protection," she said. "Based on the laboratory testing that's been done so far, we don't expect there to be cross-protection."
Asked why experts worried about swine flu given the annual havoc wreaked by regular, seasonal influenza, Schuchat said "we are dealing with a novel virus" and that the general population had not built up resistance to the illness.
"It's a virus that hasn't been around before," she said. "The general population doesn't have immunity to this virus. With seasonal flu, a good proportion of the population has some immunity."
© 2009 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved.
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