How to make a vaccine against H1N1

The global H1N1 flu epidemic has been the first global pandemic of this magnitude since 1968. And for the scientific community, and for physicians this is a very important event. From an economic point of view, there is also a certain interest here. $ 3 billion was invested in the decoding of the H1N1 genome and the development of a vaccine; five companies are involved in drug production, one of which is the American corporation Sanofi Pasteur , which has already received an order from the government for the first 75 million doses.

In the US, the number of deaths from H1N1 has already reached the level of 100 people per week, and on October 25, President Obama declared a state of emergency in the country. Authorities began calling for a vaccination. The CBS television channel in the popular 60 Minutes program showed a popular science film explaining the production and distribution process, as well as the medical effects of the H1N1 vaccine (the accompanying text for the film is here ). Despite the fulfillment to some extent of the “social order”, the film contains a number of interesting facts.

The American H1N1 vaccine is produced only on one at a factory in Swiftwater, Pennsylvania. As in other vaccines, the H1N1 virus is grown in chicken eggs, here the technology has not been greatly improved since the Second World War.

The virus is injected with a needle into the egg from the top, then the egg is placed in an incubator with constant temperature and humidity. There, the viruses grow and multiply, and then they are extracted and weakened to vaccinate people.
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Thus, a lot of eggs are needed (for national security purposes, it is even forbidden to disclose from which farms eggs are delivered, moreover, farm owners enjoy such privileges that they are the first to receive a deficient vaccine). The program to finance specialized private farms that produce a huge number of eggs is part of a seven billion plan that the Bush administration has launched in case of a possible pandemic of a virus in the future. As you can see, the forecast was fully justified fairly quickly.

However, in the case of H1N1 there are big problems. It turned out that this virus does not multiply in eggs as quickly as an ordinary flu virus. This was completely unexpected for specialists (here the “swine flu” virus, if I may say so, put a pig on it). As a result, Sanofi Pasteur was unable to complete the plan. At the moment, the company has shipped only 17 million doses of vaccine at American polyclinics, although according to a preliminary estimate made in the summer, it planned to produce 120 million doses by that date (then the estimate was reduced to 40 million, but even this plan was not fulfilled). Therefore, now the vaccine is sorely lacking for all comers, even to the USA, and the vaccine has not yet been delivered to Russia at all, and it is not known when it will be delivered and at what price. Under a contract with WHO, she should donate 100 million doses to free countries for free, but this is a drop in the ocean.

All five global vaccine manufacturers are gradually increasing production (last week, collectively, they added 9 million doses), but the demand for vaccines is growing even faster.

First of all, children should receive the vaccine, and in the USA there is a special plan for universal vaccination in schools. But at the same time, not all parents agree to vaccination. For example, in New York last week, more than half of the parents refused to vaccinate their children. On average in the country, the share of refusers is about 40%. Many do not understand why to get vaccinated, if the mortality from H1N1 is less than from ordinary flu, and with a probability of 99.8% a person recovers in a couple of days without any complications and develops immunity in a natural way.