Revealed: Who will be first in queue for swine flu jabs in October

Published on Thursday 13 August 2009 22:09

A SWINE flu vaccination programme will be launched across Scotland in the middle of October, but only certain at-risk groups will be given the jab to start with.

Health secretary Nicola Sturgeon said the initial wave of vaccinations would be given to three priority groups totalling 1.4 million people – about 30 per cent of the population.

The first phase will target all front-line health workers, pregnant women and those aged over six months who are in groups at a high risk from seasonal flu.

In addition, anyone sharing a house with someone who has a poor immune system, including people receiving treatment for cancer, could also be vaccinated.

Schoolchildren, unless they are in another at-risk group, will not be part of the initial vaccination programme.

The announcement came after the latest swine flu figures revealed a slight drop in people reporting flu-like symptoms to their doctors. Last week the rate was 44.4 per 100,000 compared with 48.4 the week before.

Laboratory tests confirmed about 9.5 per cent of random samples as swine flu. This means that about 3,000 people are thought to have contracted the H1N1 virus in the past week.

It is estimated that, in the rest of the UK, about 25,000 people have caught swine flu.

It had been hoped that the vaccine would be ready for distribution by the end of the month, just after children return to school. One of the reasons given for the slower spread of the virus in Scotland compared with the rest of the UK was the earlier school holidays.

However, it is now confirmed that the vaccine will not be ready until mid-October.

At a briefing, Ms Sturgeon said the impact on schools would be monitored as pupils returned to classes.

She said: "We will be working with schools to put a focus on hand hygiene and respiratory hygiene messages. That's still the best way of reducing the spread of infection."

The Scottish Government hopes that most of the 1.4 million people in the priority groups will be vaccinated by mid-December. The at-risk groups include those with respiratory problems such as asthma, as well those with heart conditions and diabetes.

The same vaccination programme will be rolled out south of the Border, where the priority groups total about ten million people.

The Scottish Government hopes to have the whole population immunised within a year.

Ms Sturgeon said the delivery mechanism for the vaccines was still be finalised, but patients in the priority groups should be identified by their GPs and will be contacted.

The vaccination announcement came on the day it was confirmed that a pregnant Scottish woman with swine flu who had been transferred to Sweden had returned to the UK.

Sharon Pentleton, 26, was flown from Scotland to Stockholm because no beds were available in the UK for the rare procedure she required.

Ms Pentleton, from North Ayrshire, had been receiving treatment in the intensive care unit at Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock due to an extreme reaction to the H1N1 virus.

A spokeswoman for Karolinska University Hospital said that the patient had left its care and returned to the UK.

NHS Ayrshire and Arran recommended that she received a highly specialised procedure known as extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (Ecmo) for her symptoms of adult respiratory distress syndrome.

The UK has a national Ecmo unit in Leicester, but all five beds were being used at the end of July when Ms Pentleton fell ill.

She is still believed to be in a serious condition, but was yesterday said to be recovering.