Federal panel issues H1N1 vaccine guidelines

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A federal advisory committee issued sweeping guidelines Wednesday for a vaccination campaign against the pandemic swine flu strain, identifying more than half the U.S. population as targets for the first round of vaccinations.


The advisory panel's guidelines don't trigger the start of vaccinations but are usually accepted by the government.

The priority groups include pregnant women; health care and emergency services personnel; children, adolescents and young adults up to age 24; household and caregiver contacts of children younger than six months; and healthy adults with certain medical conditions.

The guidelines were approved in a near-unanimous vote by the 15-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. One person dissented on whether to include people ages 19 to 24 among those targeted.

The vote does not trigger a decision to vaccinate against the disease, also called H1N1, but the federal government typically follows the committee's recommendations.

The recommendations could prove especially important if the pandemic strain, which emerged this spring, spreads widely before sufficient quantities of vaccine can be produced to protect everyone. The recommendations are intended to ensure that members of the most vulnerable groups get priority.

Earlier Wednesday, federal officials said they are on track to initiate a mass vaccination campaign by October, although many details remain to be worked out. Clinical trials to assess vaccine safety and efficacy are just getting under way at a handful of centers across the country.

Dr. William Schaffner, a flu researcher at Vanderbilt University, which is running one of the clinical trials, played down safety concerns that have been raised because safety data are limited.

"There is no alternative" to approving the new vaccine based on the limited data, he said. Fortunately, he added, "the novel H1N1 vaccine is created exactly the same way our seasonal vaccine is created, year in and year out."

Dr. Wellington Sun of the Food and Drug Administration said data from those trials would probably be available in September.

cnn