TESTS START ON VACCINE FOR 2009 INFLUENZA

       The first 1,270 doses of a clinical nasalspray vaccine against the typeA(H1N1) flu is now being tested on animals to study sterilisation and toxicity, Government Pharmaceutical Organisation (GPO) director Dr Vitthit Attavejchakul said yesterday.
       The trial would be carried out by Mahidol University's Faculty of Veterinary Science and the results released in about two weeks, he said.
       Meanwhile, the second lot of 1,500 specific pathogenfree eggs was inoculated with a virus seed vaccine on Tuesday. They are expected to provide a new yield of flu vaccine by tomorrow.
       The GPO had planned to test the first lot of clinical vaccine against new flu virus in 24 human volunteers by September 4.
       But because the German eggs produce a low yield of the new flu vaccine, the GPO has decided to test the vaccine on only half (12) of the volunteers.
       The rest of the volunteers will have to wait till the second lot of clinical vaccine is ready at the end of September.
       GPO plans to produce 20 million doses of the vaccine initially, and Silpakorn University's Faculty of Pharmacy is contracted to produce 10 million doses of the new flu vaccine.
       However, the plant at Silpakorn University can only produce 540,000 doses of the vaccine a month, so the GPO is negotiating with King Mongkut University of Technology's Thon Buri campus to supply further amounts of vaccine.
       GPO will allocate Bt150 million for a new vaccine plant and will spend four months installing machines and devices for vaccine production.
       If construction of the plant at King Mongkut University of Technology's Thon Buri campus is finished, GPO will use this plant to produce live attenuated vaccine while the plant at Silpakorn will shift to produce inactive vaccine.
       A leading scientist at Chulalongkorn University, Dr Thirawat Hemajutha, has suggested the GPO should renovate its animal vaccine plant, run by the Department of Livestock, at Pak Chong district in Nakhon Ratchasima, for use as a plant to temporarily produce human vaccine promptly.
       Vitthit said he had already asked the Department of Livestock but was told this was not possible, as the department plans to produce three animal vaccines and could not stop that work.
       Vitthit said the virus seed vaccine imported from Russia had not changed significantly or mutated into virulent form.
       "We did not see any significant changes in the virus' genes, particularly in the position to control its virulence," he said.
       "Every process that we have done to produce vaccine is cerฌtified by the World Health Organisation."
       The Public Health Ministry confirmed yesterday that eight more people had died from the new strain of typeA (H1N1) flu last week, bringing the total number of fatality to 119.
       Deputy permanent secretary for Health Dr Paijit Warachit said the new fatalities were four men and four women. Half were people aged between 31 to 40 years of age and categorised as a risk group for the new flu.
       Paijit said the ministry remained on its guard against the H1N1 flu pandemic. It was urging provincial authorities to monitor people who have flulike illness as the disease has already spread among farmers and workers.
       The ministry has distributed about 6.7 million tablets of the antiviral drug oseltamivir to hospitals upcountry to treat patients with flulike illnesses. It had also "reserved" about six million tablets at the GPO and Department of Disease Control. So far, about 1.8 million pills had been given out in a bid to save patients' lives.