Against flu, docs to get first shot

Health care workers, emergency medical personnel, pregnant women and healthy people between 6 months and 24 years old are among the target groups to receive the vaccine against the H1N1 virus when it first becomes available.

That’s one of several recommendations approved Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

The recommendations are based upon completion of clinical trials and when a safe vaccine is available. Five companies are making the vaccine, which officials hope will be available in October. That may not be soon enough to satisfy parents, though, since schools begin next month in Georgia.

The committee met for several hours at the CDC to set guidelines for a national vaccine program against swine flu, as it is commonly called.

If demand exceeds supply, priority should be given to subgroups within those groups including pregnant women, people younger than 19 with chronic medical conditions, and health care and emergency service personnel with direct contact with patients or infectiousness materials.

Jeremy Arieh, a spokesman for the Georgia Nurses Association, said the group supports the vaccination of health care professionals against the novel H1N1 virus. “Health care workers are on the front lines,” he said. “It’s a good practice as long as we don’t get into a situation of mandatory vaccinations.”

There have been 43,771 lab-identified cases of the virus, 302 deaths and more than 5,000 hospitalizations in the United States. Although not all patients are being tested for swine flu, health officials estimate more than 1 million people have been infected.