The WHO said on Friday it was hopeful that the pharmaceutical industry would be ready to produce an anti-swine flu vaccine by the end of next month or early July.
“We're hopeful that by the end of June or by the beginning July this will be the time that commercial companies will be in a position of being able to make a vaccine,” interim assistant director-general Keiji Fukuda said.
However, Fukuda said experts were still mulling whether to give the go ahead for production as this may reduce or halt the manufacture of vaccines for seasonal flu.
“We will hold off on making this decision for a little while,” he said.
Production of up to 4.9 billion doses a year of a vaccine against the new influenza A(H1N1) virus would be possible, a forecast presented to vaccine makers this week said.
Apart from weighing the impact of the new virus against that of seasonal flu, issues like dosage and safety testing also have to be settled.
“There will need to be fast tracking of some of these studies,” Fukuda said.
The WHO hopes to send candidate virus samples to drug companies by the end of this month to serve as a reference in making the vaccine.
Thirty vaccine makers from 19 industrialized and developing countries were invited by the WHO to a meeting on Tuesday to discuss production of a vaccine against swine flu.
The world remains at flu alert level five, signaling an “imminent pandemic,” as China, South Korea and Hong Kong also reported new cases yesterday, a day after Moscow recorded its first infection.
Australia yesterday defended its escalation of swine flu protection measures, even as Japan, which has 321 confirmed cases, relaxed measures imposed to limit the spread of the disease.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said it was inconvenient but necessary to ramp up the country's pandemic threat response as it reported its 14th confirmed infection.
Canberra raised its alert level to a containment phase on Friday, after recording the country's first domestic transmission of the A(H1N1) virus.
The victim is a 10-year-old girl who contracted the disease from a classmate who was taken ill on her return from the US.
The new phase allows for the closure of schools and other public places and the cancelation of major events, with three schools already shut following the confirmation of cases among students and further closures likely.
Rudd acknowledged the move would inconvenience families, but said it was important to take decisive action.
Health officials in Japan's Hyogo Prefecture, one of the worst-hit parts of the country, yesterday announced they were easing guidelines for more than 4,800 schools and kindergartens which had been closed to slow the spread of the virus.
In Hong Kong officials yesterday confirmed two new cases of swine flu, raising the territory's total number of infections to six, local radio reported.
The latest official figures from the WHO show 11,168 confirmed cases and 86 deaths have been recorded worldwide since A(H1N1) influenza emerged in Mexico and the US a month ago.
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan (陳馮富珍), however, said on Friday that poorer countries should be prepared for more severe cases.
“Countries especially in the developing world, where populations are most vulnerable, should prepare to see more than the present small number of severe cases,” she said.
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