As children received swine flu vaccine for the first time on Tuesday, federal health officials attacked popular myths about the pandemic and the vaccine designed to stop it.
Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an afternoon news conference that the most common misperceptions are that this flu should ever be called a “mild disease,” that the vaccine is untested and that it has arrived too late.
Flu is widespread across the country and some hospitals are getting so many emergency room visits that they have set up triage tents, but Dr. Frieden said one problem that planners had feared has yet to emerge: no intensive care units have had more patients than ventilators — something that did happen in one Canadian province last spring.
Children in several states, including New York, received nasal spray vaccines Tuesday — shots are due to begin next week — and all 50 states have started sending vaccine orders. Of the 2.4 million doses expected to ship this week, 2.2 million have been spoken for, Dr. Frieden said. Orders are expected to increase rapidly as states rent more refrigerated storage space and schedule vaccination drives.
