Find Jessie Foster

WASHINGTON (AFP) –
US health officials warned Friday that deliveries of swine flu vaccine are likely to be delayed even as influenza deaths climb, with children hit particularly hard.

Eleven more children were reported to have died of flu in a single week, 10 of them from swine flu, bringing the number of pediatric deaths from H1N1 flu since April to 86, Anne Schuchat, a senior official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told reporters.

In the worst of the past three flu seasons in the United States, which usually run from August to March, 88 children died.

As of mid-week, 11.4 million doses of H1N1 vaccine were available and around eight million had been ordered by the states.

Inoculation clinics got under way in several US states last week, targeting children, health care workers, people who work with infants, and young, healthy adults.

Long lines have been reported outside the clinics, as parents rushed to get their children -- one of the most at-risk groups -- inoculated against swine flu.

"About half the deaths we've seen in children since September 1st have occurred in teens, between the ages of 12 and 17," said Schuchat, warning that deaths of older children from swine flu were likely to increase as the season progresses.

Overall, deaths in the United States from flu have leapt above the "epidemic threshold," and widespread disease from influenza has been reported in 41 of the 50 states. The remainder of the states are seeing higher-than-average rates of illness, Schuchat said.

"It's unprecedented for this time of year to have the whole country seeing such high levels of activity," Schuchat said.

But as deaths rose and flu spread across the United States, H1N1 vaccine manufacturers have warned of slow-downs in production, Schuchat said.

"It doesn't look like we're going to be able to make the estimates we had projected by the end of this month," she said, scaling back earlier projections of 40 million doses of vaccine by the end of October to 28-30 million.