HOUSTON, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- All the citizens in Louisiana, the United States, will be able to get vaccinated against the A/H1N1 flu virus, the state's pandemic preparedness director, Dr. Frank Welch, promised on Monday.
By that time, groups that are at the greatest risk of potentially lethal complications of the new disease -- people who have been urged to get the shots first -- should have been vaccinated, he said.
These people include pregnant women, front-line healthcare workers, parents and other caretakers of children younger than six months, people six months to 24 years old and people younger than 65 who have chronic medical problems such as diabetes, high blood pressure or weakened immune systems.
Welch said the state has so far received about 71 percent of the doses it has ordered for groups that are at the greatest risk -- 464,100 doses out of 654,200.
More shipments are expected every five to 10 days for the next two or three months, said Sean Smith, a spokesman for the state Department of Health and Hospitals.
With a population of 4.4 million, Louisiana has so far confirmed 1,789 cases of A/H1N1 flu and logged 35 deaths, Smith said.
Dwarfing the official case count is the number of people who are believed to have contracted the flu, battled it and overcome it without medical help, Smith said, adding that the state estimates that 181,000 Louisianians are in this category.
Nationwide, the A/H1N1 flu has sickened about 22 million Americans since April and killed 3,900, including 540 children, according to the latest estimates released last Thursday by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.
The CDC has previously estimated more than 1,000 deaths and "many millions" of A/H1N1 infections.
The earlier conservative figures, according to the CDC, were based on laboratory-confirmed cases even as doctors largely quit using flu tests months ago -- and experts knew that deaths from things like the bacterial pneumonia that often follows flu were being missed.
The latest CDC report attempts to calculate the first six months of the A/H1N1 virus spread from April through mid-October.
The CDC said some 98,000 people have been hospitalized from this new flu or its complications, including 36,000 children, 53,000 adults under 65 and 9,000 older adults.
Deaths could range from a low of 2,500 to as many as 6,100, depending on how the data are analyzed. The CDC settled on 3,900 as the best estimate.
During the same period, the CDC predicts some 8 million children have become ill, 12 million adults under 65 and 2 million older adults.
Meanwhile, tight supplies of vaccine to combat the illness continue.
A new Associated Press-GfK poll shows only one in six parents has gotten their children vaccinated against A/H1N1 flu since inoculations began last month. Another 14 percent of parents sought vaccine, but could not find any.
The AP-GfK Poll was conducted from Nov. 5 to 9 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Media. It involved landline and cell phone interviews with 1,006 adults nationwide and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage point, the organizers said.
In a typical winter, seasonal flu strains cause 200,000 U.S. hospitalizations and 36,000 deaths, with the vast majority among people over 65.
But experts say that seasonal flu doesn't usually start circulating until November while swine flu began a big climb in September, leading to what CDC called unprecedented high levels of illness so early in a season -- and no way to know when the flu will peak.
"We are going to continue to have challenges with this pandemic," predicted Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
"I think it's important for us all to remember it's a marathon and not a sprint," she told reporters.
Special Report: World Tackles A/H1N1 Flu ¡¡
