# 7385
Lisa Schnirring of CIDRAP NEWS has the details of yesterday’s NVAC (National Vaccine Advisory Committee) meeting, where the emerging H7N9 virus was on the agenda. First a link to Lisa’s detailed report, then I’ll return with a bit more.
Federal officials weigh H7N9 vaccine options
Lisa Schnirring
Staff Writer
Jun 11, 2013 (CIDRAP News) – Intensive federal deliberations are under way on whether to stockpile a vaccine against the H7N9 flu virus that emerged this spring in China, similar to the government's response to the H5N1 avian flu threat, health officials said today.
In the meantime, vaccine companies are getting ready to produce enough vaccine for clinical trials, which are slated to begin in August, according to an update presented before the National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC), an outside group that assists the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The meeting was broadcast live on the Web.
As Lisa points out in her article, our limited experience with H7 and H5 vaccines suggests that they are more difficult to produce than vaccines for seasonal (or even the H1N1 pandemic) strains.
H5N1 vaccines required as much as 12 times as much antigen as seasonal flu vaccines, and still only produced modest immune responses.
In early May we saw an analysis of some of these problems published in JAMA, penned by CIDRAP’s Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH; Katie S. Ballering, PhD; and Nicholas S. Kelley, PhD. Rather than try to pick and choose excerpts, I would invite you to follow the link and read:
Major Challenges in Providing an Effective and Timely Pandemic Vaccine for Influenza A(H7N9)
Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH; Katie S. Ballering, PhD; Nicholas S. Kelley, PhD
JAMA. 2013;():1-2. doi:10.1001/jama.2013.6589.
Published online May 9, 2013
Two months ago, in H7N9 Vaccine Realities, we looked at the gap between predicted vaccine supplies during the 2009 pandemic, and actual vaccine deliveries.
At the time I wrote:
In a world of 7 billion, the reality is that our ability to manufacture and (just as importantly) distribute a pandemic vaccine in a short amount of time remains severely limited.
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It is likely that relatively few people could expect to see any novel pandemic vaccine in less than six months from the time production started.
And most of the world would probably still be waiting after a year.
The truth is, our first line of defense in any pandemic is not going to be a shot or a pill, it will be a range of steps collectively called NPIs, or Non Pharmaceutical Interventions.
The CDC’s Nonpharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) webpage defines NPIs as:
Nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) are actions, apart from getting vaccinated and taking medicine, that people and communities can take to help slow the spread of illnesses like influenza (flu). NPIs are also known as community mitigation strategies.
NPIs are geared to the virulence and spread of the virus, and may range from simple advice to `wash your hands and cover your coughs’ to mandatory school and business closings.
Should the H7N9 virus, novel coronavirus, or any other novel virus threaten, we’ll be talking a lot about NPIs, and their efficacy, impact, and practicality in the blog.
None of this is to suggest that a vaccine has no place in a pandemic scenario. They have the potential to help reduce the impact of a second or third pandemic wave.
But as a panacea for pandemic, vaccines are likely to fall far short of many people’s expectations.
