Bird flu vaccine for Finns shortly

TT

For example, if you work on a fur farm in Finland, you can soon choose to get vaccinated against bird flu. Archive image. Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT

This week, Finland will start vaccinating people in risk groups against bird flu, Finnish media reports.

It will be the country's first in the world, according to Reuters.

It was earlier in June that the EU's authority for preparedness and response to health crises signed an agreement with British CSL Seqirus to purchase 665,000 doses of vaccine against the variant of bird flu, H5N1, which in recent times has begun to spread between more and more different mammals, as well as both wild and domesticated birds.

And according to the EU, Finland will be the first to start distributing the vaccine.

The vaccine is free for adults who, in their work, run a greater risk of contracting the virus - for example, working on fur farms or handling birds.

One reason why people in Finland are eager to get started with vaccination is the country's many fur farms - where there is a risk of the animals coming into contact with wild animals, according to the Finnish equivalent of the Public Health Agency.

Vaccines for 10,000 people have been purchased with the aim of preventing illness and also limiting the risks of the virus mutating and spreading between people.

So far, however, no cases of bird flu have been detected among humans in Finland, and the virus is very rarely detected in humans at all.

Sweden has chosen not to be part of the EU's joint procurement.