Swine flu vaccine funding boosted

Canadian research on the safety and effectiveness of the swine flu vaccine is getting a $2.7-million boost in funding, the federal government announced Thursday.

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq said the funding is on top of the $10.8 million the federal government allocated for swine flu research earlier this summer.

The Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research will provide the funding to double the number of clinical trials for the vaccine from five to 10, said Dr. David-Butler Jones, Canada's chief public health officer.

It is paramount to have a safe and effective vaccine to get into people's arms, Butler-Jones told reporters.

The vaccine is expected to be available in November.

Dr. Scott Halperin, director of the Canadian Centre for Vaccinology in Halifax, will lead the network of 80 scientists from 30 research and public health institutions across the country.

Researchers plan to enroll First Nations individuals in Winnipeg and Edmonton to test the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine in these populations, Halperin said.

Hospitalization and death rates

While the initial wave of serious swine flu cases in the spring seemed to have a higher impact on aboriginal Canadians living in remote communities, the latest statistics on hospitalizations and deaths that compare infected aboriginal and nonaboriginal patients suggest no major differences, Butler-Jones told reporters.

The federal government is also organizing a conference next week in Winnipeg for health-care professionals from across Canada to share information on how to handle an expected surge in cases.

They will try to get a sense of when longer treatment is required such as in intensive care units, and who is at greatest risk and likely to benefit from early treatment.

While it's impossible to predict how many people could be affected in a second wave, hospitals could see up to four times as many outpatients, Butler-Jones said. 

But the most dire projections are unlikely given that Canadians have already experienced a first wave, antivirals are available and a vaccine is coming, he added.

"Typically in pandemics, somewhere between 25 and 35 per cent of the population, over that period of 18 months, potentially two years, will eventually become infected," Butler-Jones said. "Exactly what number we'll see as we move through this in fall is hard to say."

Also on Thursday, French researchers reported a worldwide case fatality rate for H1N1 of 0.6 per cent. That rate represents the number of reported deaths per number of reported cases, as of July 16. The figure is on par with seasonal flu, Butler-Jones said, so the goal is to keep death and hospitalization rates below that of a bad flu season.