Italy will gradually vaccinate its whole population against the new H1N1 flu, Junior Health Minister Ferruccio Fazio said Thursday.
Fazio said the move, to be carried out over ''one to two years,'' was not due to the clinical seriousness of the virus but the extreme ease with which it can be spread - the reason for which the World Health Organisation is set to declare its highest pandemic risk, level 6.
''We'll have to progressively vaccinate the entire population, not immediately but in the course of a year of two to prevent pandemics,'' Fazio said at the opening of a Rome clinic for the new flu.
He said Italy was preparing vaccination plans with the European Union ''to try to limit the number of patients we'll have in the autumn''.
Earlier this week Fazio said a vaccine would limit a possible epidemic in Italy this winter to between one to two million cases.
He added that the vaccine would be ready by October and recalled how people between the ages of 20 and 40 appear to be more susceptible to this new flu, also known as Influenza A.
Seasonal flu usually targets the elderly and the very young.
Fazio said it was important to remain on guard against the flu, ''not so much for its present state but the potential of the flu to mutate unexpectedly''.
Although the virus is currently not virulent, he explained, ''it is highly contagious and could become aggressive. Sometimes a flu becomes even more powerful when it re-emerges after a summer lull''.
PANDEMIC RISK REMAINS.
The risk of a pandemic remains, Fazio said, ''because the virus could mutate into something unknown once it comes into contact with the one of the seasonal flus or other swine and bird flus''.
This risk was highlighted last month by Italy's Higher Institute of Health (ISS).
''We cannot rule out the possibility that the H1N1 virus may remain at low levels now and will then explode in a pandemic in the autumn the way the Spanish Flu did,'' ISS official Gianni Rezza said.
The Spanish Flu was also caused by a strain of the H1N1 virus and killed between 70 to 100 million people between March 1918 and June 1920.
''There are some who believe this new flu could behave like the Spanish Flu, which had an initial, mild wave in the spring of 1918 and then a violent outbreak in the autumn,'' Rezza said.
''Although there is no way to predict how this flu will evolve in the future, it is clear that we are allowing for this possibility in developing a new vaccine and strategies to combat a possible pandemic,'' he added.
The lastest data from the World Health Organization said there were now over 26,500 cases of the flu in 73 countries while the death toll had risen to 139.
The United States remains the country with the highest number of cases, 13,217 and 27 deaths, while Mexico, where the epidemic started, has had the greatest number of fatalities, 106 out of 5.717 cases.
Canada has had 2,115 cases and three deaths while Chile, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic have each had a fatality.
In Europe, Britain has recorded the highest number of cases (557), followed by Spain (291), Germany (63), France (58) and Italy (50).
