It only took two months, but it seems that the supply of swine flu vaccine here in the United States has finally caught up with the demand.
A lot of people have had trouble getting the vaccine so far — you may have heard stories of (or experienced) long lines and canceled flu shot clinics. Still, a lot of high risk people did manage to get a swine flu shot.
Now there should be swine flu shots a-plenty… just in time for the virus to start fading away. Experts are seeing the number of new cases go down, but that doesn’t mean we can count swine flu out entirely for the winter. In the 1957 flu pandemic, the virus started to fade in the fall and then made a comeback in January and February.
Health experts would rather not see a third wave of swine flu, so restrictions on who can get the vaccines are lifting. And in “normal” flu years, interest in getting the flu shot usually starts to fade by the time the holidays hit.
The United States has ordered 250 million doses of the swine flu vaccine from manufacturers. We’re pretty close to the one hundred million mark now.
Will another 150 million people want the vaccine? It may be too soon to tell. But the government would rather have too much than too little. Extra vaccine supplies could be sent to developing countries, as well.
Next year, we probably won’t have to worry about separate shots for swine flu and “regular” flu. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the Associated Press that vaccine makers would most likely combine the two for the 2010 flu season.
One thing that has health care officials excited? The success of in-school vaccine clinics around the United States. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are hoping that more in-school flu vaccine clinics could have a big impact on the number of annual cases of influenza.