Swine flu vaccination to start within weeks!!! ha ha at last

The first wave of vaccination against swine flu is due to start this month as a study today confirmed fears that healthy children are prone to complications from the virus.
The Government hopes to begin vaccinating high risk groups and frontline health workers against swine flu in the second half of October, depending on whether batches of the newly-licensed Pandemrix vaccine, from GlaxoSmithKline, become available.
Internal NHS documents suggest that supplies could reach local health authorities by October 14 at the earliest, reaching GPs’ surgeries up to five days later.
Healthy adults and children will not be offered the vaccination as a priority despite a study by the Department of Health showing that eight out of ten young children requiring hospital treatment for swine flu were previously healthy.
Asked whether the Government would reconsider its priority groups for vaccination in light of the latest findings, Sir Liam Donaldson, the Government’s Chief Medical Officer, said: "I think it would be counter-intuitive to think that children with underlying health problems are not at increased risk."
Sir Liam added that the Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation, which advises the Government, are meeting next week and would "be giving advice on the next stage of the vaccination programme," which may include offering the jab to the wider population.
The analysis of 192 patients who needed hospital treatment found that the majority were in the 16-44 age group. Of these 52 per cent were said to be previously healthy, but among the under 5s this proportion was 82 per cent.
The findings suggest that younger people who have not previously encountered strains of flu that are similar to the H1N1 swine flu virus are more likely to develop complications if they catch it. Older people who are otherwise healthy are thought to be less likely to develop complications.
The same study found that, of those treated in hospital, more than one in four had asthma, about 15 per cent had heart disease and 10 per cent suffered from diabetes. Of the hospitalised patients, about 4 per cent – "a small but significant proportion" – were pregnant women, he added.
The breakdown came as Sir Liam said that the the number of swine flu cases in England had risen for the third week in a row.
"The continued increase in swine flu activity is consistent with the early stages of a second wave", he said, but added that the rates of illness are nothing yet like the "explosive increases" that would be expected at the peak of a pandemic.
Estimates from the Health Protection Agency suggest that 14,000 people in England fell ill with swine flu last week, more than a 50 per cent increase on 9,000 cases the previous week.
Since the start of term, at least 79 schools in England had suffered swine flu outbreaks that meant more than 15 per cent of their pupils were off sick. Among them were 39 schools in Yorkshire, 12 in the West Midlands and 12 in London.
There have been two more deaths in England, bringing the UK total to 84. As of yesterday there were 286 patients being treated for swine flu in hospital, with 36 in a critical condition.
Sir Liam also announced today that a number of specialised beds to treat people with severe lung failure will be doubled from five to ten units at a specialist unit in Leicester. Earlier this year, Sharon Pendelton, a Scottish woman who developed serious complications of swine flu while pregnant, was flown to Sweden for the procedure, known as Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO), due to the lack of beds in Britain.