Calling the new H1N1 influenza virus ?unstoppable?, the World Health Organization (WHO) encouraged drug manufacturers to produce vaccines to combat the pandemic. The WHO also said that healthcare workers should be the first vaccinated, leaving it to individual countries to determine who would receive priority after nurses, doctors, and medical technicians.
It is now known that the H1N1 virus behaves differently than seasonal flu, disproportionally affecting young people, healthy adults, and the obese but infiltrating deep into the lungs. Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO director of the Initiative for Vaccine Research, reported the findings of her organization's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE), calling the pandemic unstoppable and of global concern.
"The SAGE recognized first that healthcare workers should be immunized in all countries in order to retain a functional health system as the virus evolves," Kieny noted.
While seasonal influenza is already deadly, killing 250,000 to 500,000 annually and heavily affecting the elderly. However our older generation seems to have special immunity to the new H1N1 virus as it is similar to the H1N1 virus responsible for the massive 1918 pandemic. Nature recently published a confirmation that people born before 1920 carry antibodies to the previous strain.
The reason this new swine flu is so feared is that it replicates in the lungs better than others, making it more lethal. An interesting correlation has been drawn between severe reactions to the virus and obesity. The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that at the University of Michigan nine out of ten of patients treated in intensive care units for this flu were obese and had atypical symptoms like blood clots in the lungs and multiple organ failure. Of the ten, three have died and the remaining seven have not recovered. However, Kieny points out that it is not clear what the link is; perhaps these obese people have undiagnosed risk-factor health issues or perhaps simply being obese is a risk.
Drug manufacturers are struggling to create a vaccine, as the official death toll has risen to 429 as of last week. The WHO is trying to get better viruses for these companies, which have been set back because the virus strains previously distributed did not grow well in chicken eggs (which are used to make all flu vaccines).