Infectious Diseases: New Flu Due

When a new strain of Asian flu broke out in Hong Kong last July, infecting 400,000 and killing 26, U.S. Public Health Service officials took immediate action. Naming the new strain A-2/Hong Kong/68, they sent off samples to labs to be bred in fertilized hen's eggs* and converted into vaccine.

Drug manufacturers are now rushing to make the new vaccine available in time to forestall an epidemic. But chances are it will not be ready until January. One serviceman returning from Viet Nam has already carried the new flu home to Georgia. In the meantime, doctors will have to rely on the old vaccine, which at best can provide only a modicum of protection.

Public Health Service officials predict that the new flu, a variant of the A-2 that triggered a global epidemic in 1957 and killed 19,000, will cause, in healthy victims, illnesses similar to those resulting from earlier strains of A2. Average severity: two to five days of aches, pains and fever. For the elderly and infirm, however, A-2/Hong Kong/68 poses a threat to life. With this in mind, PHS experts have advised physicians to give inoculations of either old or new vaccine only to persons who run the risk of severe complications when they come down with winter's most miserable complaint.