Pasteur Institute Calls for Immediate Mass Flu Vaccination

(From the French- language publication Nouvelle Solidarité)

PARIS, June 5, 2009 — Interviewed by the daily Le Figaro yesterday, Prof. Sylvie Van der Werf, who heads a research unit of the French Pasteur Institute, confirmed that France is preparing to vaccinate the entire French population. While a phase six alert is not yet adopted by the World Health Organization, in reality that point has been reached, since several cases of communitarian (autonomous and outside its original area) transmission exist already.

Van der Werf stresses the unconventional behavior of the new H1N1 influenza virus. Usually influenza spreads in autumn and winter, but that's not a law, since influenza viruses circulate the whole year in the tropics. The current virus is spreading in the United States and Canada, while these countries are in Spring and early Summer. We're not in normal conditions of virus transmission, she says.

Another anomaly: Normally a new influenza virus substitutes itself for the virus of the seasonal flu. This is not taking place now. We're in an entirely new situation. We don't know if there will be one or two viruses next Autumn in France. Everything indicates that the virus will spread massively in the Northern Hemisphere. When? End of June, end of August? End of September? One cannot exclude that the virus will start circulating at an unusual time period.

Therefore, vaccination of everyone has to be undertaken, in the North as well as in the South, in the rich as well in the developing countries. And in her opinion—in light of the current evolution of the disease—the sooner the better.