While the first proven cases of swine flu have just been declared in Europe (more precisely in Spain and Great Britain) in people who have stayed in Mexico, and that many suspected cases are appearing in Denmark, Switzerland … and in France, the World Health Organization has contacted the Swiss laboratory Novartis, asking them to be ready for the production of a vaccine against swine flu. However, the spokesperson for the laboratory added that no decision has yet been taken to put the vaccine into production.
Even by accelerating production as much as possible, it will take an incompressible time to produce the first doses of vaccine. The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has taken a sample of the virus that causes the disease and produced a vaccine strain that it is developing. Once the virus is “sequenced”, a strain of this virus will be injected into embryonated chicken eggs before being produced on a large scale. A period of 3 to 6 months would then be necessary before being able to inject the first vaccines.
For its part, the Roche laboratory, which produces the anti-viral Tamiflu, the drug recommended by the WHO against the swine flu virus, announced that it was ready to ship 3 million doses of Tamiflu to the countries who will request it.
