On July 13th this blog discussed in detail a letter sent by David Salisbury, the UK’s minister for immunisation, declaring that an H1N1 vaccine will be available in the UK in August. The letter described immunization schedules and who would be providing the vaccine, leading one to conclude that clinical trials to show the vaccine was safe and immunogenic had been completed.
In an interview with the UK’s Guardian newspaper Dr. Margaret Chan, the WHO Director General, clarified the H1N1 vaccine situation. She confirmed that WHO expects an H1N1 vaccine to be available in August, but pointed out that vaccine availability is not the same as having a vaccine that has been proven to be safe. Her projection was that clinical trial data would not be available for two to three more months from now.
Baxter Healthcare, one of the two Pharma companies contracted to provide H1N1 vaccine to the UK, has said that it should be ready to ship vaccine by the end of July or early August. It now appears that clinical trials began in early July, which means clinical data would not be available for submission to regulatory agencies until September at the earliest.
So, late September or early October seems a more realistic time-frame for the first immunizations in the UK.
