ATLANTA, Oct 13, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Almost 10 million doses of the H1N1
vaccine are available and about half are the injectable kind, U.S. health
officials said Tuesday.
Orders are being processed and vaccine doses are heading out in a process
officials said would take weeks.
The first batches of the vaccine were in the nasal spray, FluMist, but since it
uses "live virus" it's only recommended for healthy people ages 2-49, health
officials said.
Pregnant women, who have been hit hard by H1N1 flu, can get the injectable H1N1
flu vaccines, which consist of "dead" virus. There are probably two factors that
influence the risk that pregnant women have for both seasonal flu and the H1N1
flu, Dr. Ann Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in
Atlanta said in a news briefing Tuesday.
"In pregnancy, there's a change in the immune system which makes it easier for
the woman to hold the fetus and not have immune reaction to the baby and so risk
of infections can be greater," she said. "The second issue is probably more
mechanical, that as the woman gets larger with the baby growing, there can be
pressing on the airways and really a restrictive lung disease. So it's harder to
take a deep breath and it's harder to fight off a lung infection especially in
the later stages of pregnancy."
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Copyright 2009 by United Press International