US releases stockpile of Tamiflu for kids

MANILA, Philippines - Swine flu is sickening so many children across the United States, some of them fatally, that federal health officials decided Friday to release the last of the national stockpile of children’s Tamiflu.

Even though the winter flu season has yet to begin, flu has now killed 114 children and teenagers in the United States since April, said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Since the CDC began tracking children’s flu deaths five years ago, the highest toll was 88, in the winter of 2007-8; many more children died in the pandemics of 1918, 1957 and 1968, but there are no accurate counts.

Frieden’s figures were for deaths confirmed by laboratories.

On Thursday, the CDC estimated that in the swine flu’s spring wave there were 2.7 deaths for each confirmed one, so the actual number of children’s deaths may be closer to 300.

Last Oct. 1, anticipating shortages of liquid Tamiflu for children, the government released 300,000 doses from the national stockpile.

On Friday, it released the last 234,000 doses.

It has ordered more from Roche, its Swiss manufacturer, but that is not expected to arrive before January, Frieden said.

In the meantime, federal officials are encouraging pharmacies to empty powder from adult capsules and dilute it with syrup into children’s doses.

Some large pharmacy chains are already doing so. Presumably, the same could be done with the 37 million adult doses still in the stockpile.

(The Strategic National Stockpile has many more adult doses because they are lighter and easier to manage, and because it was created in anticipation of a pandemic of avian flu, which was not known to disproportionately affect children.)

Deaths are expected to keep rising, Frieden said. Flu activity is now widespread in 48 states, up from 46 last week.

Hospitalizations start to go up about a week after people start falling ill in any community, and deaths tend to lag two to three weeks behind that, Frieden said.

There are now nearly 27 million doses of swine flu vaccine available, Frieden said, up from 16 million a week ago.

The clamor for the shots continues to rise, however, and even some cities that had many cases in the spring, like Boston, are seeing a second wave.  – AP