Health Commissioner Says Vaccine Concerns "Unfounded"

From Kentucky Public Radio's Tony McVeighKentucky's top health official is strongly defending the safety and efficacy of the H1N1, or swine flu, vaccine, which continues to arrive in the commonwealth.An Associated Press poll indicates more than a third of American parents don’t want their children to receive the H1N1 vaccine, because of potential side effects and the haste of vaccine development. But Kentucky Public Health Commissioner Dr. William Hacker says the concerns are unfounded because the vaccine is simply a reformulation of the Influenza-A vaccine distributed annually.“As a matter of fact," he says, "more testing was done on this particular H1N1 vaccine than usual, just simply because the federal government knew there would be anxiety because it is new in terms of H1N1, that’s something they haven’t heard before.”Hacker says he’s so confident in the vaccine, he’s recommending his own family receive it. So far, the state has received more than 11-thousand doses of the vaccine in nasal spray form. Injectable vaccine will begin arriving next week.