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Swine Flu: Current Vaccines Cannot Protect Against H1N1 Virus but May Reduce Severity of Symptoms

Current flu vaccines may not be proved effective over the swine virus but it is believed that people who have taken these vaccines on time are likely to show less symptoms of the diseases, said a vaccine specialist. The virus which has already killed 149 people so far in Mexico has spread to other parts of US, Canada and Europe. Expert fear that it may turn out to trigger the pandemic.

Swine flu is a type of H1N1 form of influenza virus. Present vaccines can only protect against H1N1, test show that it does not protect against the new strain that has developed, although it may be a little bit of helpful.

Most of the people may show some signs of immunity against the H1N1 that may be helpful to certain level as said by Dr. John McConnell who is an editor at the Journal called Lancet Infectious Diseases. The virus which is spreading rapidly among humans leave the health officials with fear that it could turn out into a flu pandemic that is expected by most of the scientists.

More than 20 companies around the world are known to make flu vaccines including the GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Sanofi Pasteur, Novartis AG  and Australia’s CSL Ltd. But the process of vaccine preparation is clumsy and very much out dated, and development in some new technology is still not expected.

Karl Nicholson, a vaccine expert from the Leicester University said that if the virus turns into an uncontrolled pandemic than it could hit even before we develop a vaccine. The fact is that the vaccine can not be made in time so it is very important to prime the population. One of the major problems is that most people do not take yearly flu vaccines. According to health officials, at least 85 percent of the people in America are expected to have got the vaccine but a survey conducted by Rand Corp in December proved that only one third of the expected people had actually taken their regular flu vaccine.

Experts further explain that that the swine flu is only related to human strains to a certain level, so the present vaccine could not be proved much effective in producing the antibodies. According to Ian Jones, a researcher at the University of Reading, it is a possibility that the current vaccine may only reduce the severity of the symptoms but may not succeed in stopping the infection completely.