Vaccination

Vaccines are available for different kinds of swine flu. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the new swine flu vaccine for use in the United States on September 15, 2009. Studies by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), show that a single dose creates enough antibodies to protect against the virus within about 10 days.

Around three billion doses of a vaccine for H1N1/09 (swine flu) will be produced annually, with delivery from November 2009.

Developing, testing, and manufacturing sufficient quantities of a vaccine is a process that takes many months. According to Keiji Fukuda of the World Health Organization (WHO), "There’s much greater vaccine capacity than there was a few years ago, but there is not enough vaccine capacity to instantly make vaccines for the entire world’s population for influenza." Nasal mist version of the vaccine started shipping on October 1, 2009. Health care workers in the U.S. states of Tennessee and Indiana were the first recipients of the H1N1 vaccine, while two-thirds of Americans plan to be vaccinated against the flu.