“If I could wave the vaccine magic wand or we could consult the Hogwarts Medical School, we’d have had a vaccine back in May,” said Jay Butler, MD. The director of the CDC’s H1N1 Vaccine Task Force was jokingly referring to the fictitious Hogwarts boarding school of wizardry in J.K. Rowling’s popular Harry Potter book series.

In the real world, the amount of time it took researchers and public health officials to develop and begin distribution of an H1N1 vaccine is on the faster end of the spectrum of what experts had predicted.

“We anticipated that it would probably be six to nine months after a pandemic is identified before a vaccine would actually be available,” Butler said. “Here we are, barely six months into the pandemic, and we’re starting to see vaccine available for administration.”

Today, the first doses of H1N1 vaccine arrived at hospitals in Memphis, Tenn. and Indianapolis, Ind. in the form of a nasal spray.

At these two locations, health care workers are getting vaccinated first. Local health officials said this is to prevent health care workers from getting sick and missing work at a time they are most needed, as well as to reduce the chances of them spreading the virus among hospital patients — who often have weakened immune systems.

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