Impact of air travel on flu season; bird flu vaccine plans
A few items in the news this week that have implications on continuing avian flu pandemic preparedness efforts...
1) While not directly vaccine-related, an interesting paper appears in the October issue of PLoS Medicine titled "Empirical Evidence for the Effect of Airline Travel on Inter-Regional Influenza Spread in the United States". In short, the paper presents evidence suggesting that the 2001 flu season was delayed as a result of reduced air travel in the U.S. following the 9/11 attacks. While starting later than usual, the trade-off was that the flu season extended farther than is typically seen. (That finding isn't altogether surprising, however, considering the resumption of domestic and international air travel shortly after the attacks.) These observations could be of use when evaluating the impact of limiting air travel in order to mitigate the spread of a potential pandemic. Here's the Washington Post story on the paper.
2) As for vaccines in a pandemic, the September 29 issue of Vaccine includes a report of a meeting of global vaccine policy leaders titled "A global pandemic influenza vaccine action plan." (subscription required for full text). It's a sobering assessment of our current vaccine production capabilities, as the paper begins by noting a worldwide production capacity of one billion doses per year (less than 1/6th the world's population). That's a best case scenario, as the need for a two-dose vaccination series would cut that capacity in half. Of course, production is in many respects the "easy" part; getting those vaccines administered to at-risk populations is an even greater challenge.
That said, the authors propose three somewhat self-evident approaches for improving the otherwise-gloomy pandemic vaccine picture... 1) Increasing seasonal vaccine demand to stimulate market forces and augment supply, 2) Increasing production capacity for pandemic vaccines, and 3) Developing new technologies that offer broader immunity or improve long-term efforts. Good ideas all, but many questions remain about how to achieve them and how much time we have to do so.
1) While not directly vaccine-related, an interesting paper appears in the October issue of PLoS Medicine titled "Empirical Evidence for the Effect of Airline Travel on Inter-Regional Influenza Spread in the United States". In short, the paper presents evidence suggesting that the 2001 flu season was delayed as a result of reduced air travel in the U.S. following the 9/11 attacks. While starting later than usual, the trade-off was that the flu season extended farther than is typically seen. (That finding isn't altogether surprising, however, considering the resumption of domestic and international air travel shortly after the attacks.) These observations could be of use when evaluating the impact of limiting air travel in order to mitigate the spread of a potential pandemic. Here's the Washington Post story on the paper.
2) As for vaccines in a pandemic, the September 29 issue of Vaccine includes a report of a meeting of global vaccine policy leaders titled "A global pandemic influenza vaccine action plan." (subscription required for full text). It's a sobering assessment of our current vaccine production capabilities, as the paper begins by noting a worldwide production capacity of one billion doses per year (less than 1/6th the world's population). That's a best case scenario, as the need for a two-dose vaccination series would cut that capacity in half. Of course, production is in many respects the "easy" part; getting those vaccines administered to at-risk populations is an even greater challenge.
That said, the authors propose three somewhat self-evident approaches for improving the otherwise-gloomy pandemic vaccine picture... 1) Increasing seasonal vaccine demand to stimulate market forces and augment supply, 2) Increasing production capacity for pandemic vaccines, and 3) Developing new technologies that offer broader immunity or improve long-term efforts. Good ideas all, but many questions remain about how to achieve them and how much time we have to do so.
Labels: Pandemic flu, Planning
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