The number of confirmed cases of swine flu rose by 40 nationally yesterday, to 2025, but there were no more reports of deaths related to the illness.
At Dunedin Hospital, no patients admitted were known to have the illness, Otago and Southland District Health Boards H1N1 incident controller Leanne Samuel said yesterday.
Late last week, the hospital limited visiting to wards 8C (cancer), 7A (respiratory), the children's ward and the Queen Mary Maternity Centre to arranged visits, asking prospective visitors to report to the patient inquiries desk in the main foyer before proceeding further.
Ms Samuel said there had been a few teething issues around this, but it was expected that once communications were refined more people would comply.
This week, the World Health Organisation's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (Sage) on immunisation issued guidelines on vaccine use, although at this stage no vaccine is available.
In New Zealand, 300,000 doses of what is expected to be a two-dose vaccine have been ordered in advance, but it is not expected they will be licensed for use before late December, deputy director of public health Dr Fran McGrath said.
Most people with the illness had found it to be mild, but if it became more severe it would be possible for Medsafe to shorten its licensing programme to accommodate that, but at this stage this did not seem likely.
The WHO recommendations were that countries should immunise their health care workers as a first priority and New Zealand's pandemic planning would comply with that.
No decisions had been made about whether the vaccine might be offered to people other than front-line health workers and those in other emergency services.
The effectiveness and safety of the vaccine would need to be known before further decisions on its availability would be made.
Health authorities did not need to make these decisions quickly and had the opportunity to learn much more about the illness and its behaviour which was "extremely useful", Dr McGrath said.
