U.S. sees no "undue" H1N1 economic impact

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on Monday she does not expect the H1N1 flu pandemic to have a larger than usual effect on the U.S. economy.

But the government make review flu vaccine manufacturing, which is based on 50-year-old technology, she said.

So far the pandemic is not expected to have "an undue economic impact beyond what you normally have with flu," Napolitano told the Reuters Washington Summit.

Napolitano, one of President Barack Obama's top advisers on the pandemic, provided no estimates. But she predicted the economy and other factors, including vaccine production, will ultimately form the basis for a broad H1N1 review.

"Once we are through this season and we can see what has actually happened, and what the clinical picture was like ... what the impact on the economy, if any, was like, then there will be time and should be time for a review," she said.

"This has been a massive enterprise. It has involved thousands of people and billions of dollars," she said.

The U.S. government is in the midst of a $6.4 billion mass immunization program against swine flu, the first American initiative of its kind in a generation.

The government has bought vaccine from five makers who also make seasonal flu vaccine -- AstraZeneca (AZN.L), Sanofi-Pasteur (SASY.PA), Novartis AG (NOVN.VX), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L) and CSL (CSL.AX).

Health officials expect to make available up to 250 million doses of vaccine by the end of 2009 but have predicted bumps in the road and last week announced that vaccine production goals for October could be off by as much as 25-30 percent.

The problem lies in getting chicken eggs to yield vaccine. It took five months to make the vaccine against H1N1.

The U.S. government is helping to fund companies working on faster, better technologies but progress has been slow. The ultimate goal is a universal influenza vaccine that would protect against all strains.

"I think there should be and will be an after-action review and that will necessarily entail revisiting the issue of how flu vaccine is conceived and manufactured," Napolitano said.

A typical seasonal flu season in the United States can kill 36,000 people, mainly the elderly. But H1N1 poses a greater danger to children and young adults and health officials say it may infect more people because so few have any immunity to it.

Estimates on flu's economic impact are more difficult to compile and can vary greatly.

But the World Bank said in July that a flu pandemic could trigger global GDP losses of 0.7 to 4.8 percentage points, depending on severity.

Regionally, official surveys suggested losses of 1.5 to 5 percentage points in U.S. gross domestic product, 2.6 to 6.8 percentage points in Asia and 1.6 to 3.3 percentage points for the European Union.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Anthony Boadle)