Swine flu stockpiles to be used for seasonal flu as death toll hits 50

BRITISH health officials, battling a seasonal flu epidemic that has already killed 50 people, told doctors yesterday they should use stockpiled H1N1 pandemic shots to protect patients if they had no seasonal vaccines available.

Britain is experiencing a sharp increase in both mild and severe flu cases this winter, most of them caused by the H1N1 strain, also known as swine flu, leading to local shortages of seasonal vaccine.

Yesterday hospitals across the country begin cancelling planned operations to free up intensive care beds to deal with a rising numbers of seriously ill flu patients.

Chief medical officer Sally Davies said she was writing to doctors to advise that they should use pandemic shots left over from last season if stocks of this year’s vaccine run out.

Flu vaccines are made by several drugmakers, including GlaxoSmithKline, France’s Sanofi-Aventis and the Swiss firm Novartis, all of which made H1N1 shots last season to deal with the swine flu pandemic.

The 2009/10 pandemic proved less severe than feared and substantial stockpiles of pandemic vaccine went unused.

David Salisbury, Britain’s director of immunisation, said the pandemic shot was a highly effective and safe vaccine and was well within its expiry date.

“The key question is to make sure that we protect as many people as we can as flu is circulating,” he told a news briefing.

Britain has 12.7 million doses of GSK’s Pandemrix stockpiled that could be used. Salisbury acknowledged that this pandemic vaccine would not protect against all strains of flu but said it was in the “best public health interests ...to provide what we can now”.

Of the 50 deaths from flu recorded in Britain since the start of this season’s flu outbreak in October, 45 were from H1N1 and five from B strain influenza.

The H1N1 strain is included in seasonal flu vaccines being offered across the world this year after the World Health Organisation said it was likely to be the most dominant strain of the northern hemisphere’s 2010/2011 flu season.

The European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) said Britain was experiencing a “surge” in flu cases, which could soon be mirrored around Europe.

France, Russia and Ukraine are also reporting flu rates above usual for this time of year, it said.

Meanwhile, a 32-year-old woman died following swine flu “complications” two weeks after giving birth to a son, a hospital said.

The family of Sarah Applin, 32, of Thurston, Suffolk, urged pregnant women to opt for vaccination.

Staff said Applin died at West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds on Tuesday.

Her parents, Jane and Barry Waterman, urged any person on the at-risk register, especially pregnant woman, to have the flu vaccination.