Tests dash hopes of rapid production of bird flu vaccine

The results of first large-scale trials of a low-dose vaccine against H5N1 bird flu have been announced – and they are unexpectedly disappointing. Scientists had hoped that very low doses of vaccine virus would make humans immune if injected along with an immune-stimulating chemical called an adjuvant.

But on Thursday, French vaccine company Sanofi pasteur announced that in tests on 300 people in France, they did not. “The prospects for adequate global supplies of an effective pandemic vaccine of any kind are dimmer now than they were last week,” David Fedson, founder of the vaccine industry’s pandemic task force, told New Scientist.

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This means, says Fedson, that “if all the world's influenza vaccine companies were to produce this vaccine for six months, there would be enough to vaccinate only 225 million people".

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8478

225 million people is a lot better than zero. Especially if you're smart about which 225 million people are vaccinated.

for the whole world....

You go to war with the vaccine you have, not the vaccine you wish you had!

They can't start producing a vaccine until the virus undergoes its (potential) transition to a pandemic strain. The vaccine that was tested would not have provided any protection against THAT strain, only against the current H5N1 avian flu, which is not easily transmissible among humans anyway. It wasn't a test of that specific vaccine so much as a test of the tiny dose plus adjuvant technique. Tying up the worlds VERY limited flu vaccine production capacity making vaccine against the present H5N1 avian strains would make things even worse if a pandemic strain emerges.