As China rolls out the first phase of its programme to vaccinate 65 million of its 1.3 billion people against A/H1N1 swine flu, the Ministry of Health has confirmed that the disease is spreading inland and into rural areas and may infect tens of millions of Chinese people in the coming months.

Vaccination got under way in Beijing on 9 September, state media have reported, and will also cover Shanghai and Guangdong province in the initial phase. So far two vaccine manufacturers, the Beijing based Sinovac Biotech Ltd and Hualan Biological Engineering in Henan province, have been granted production licences by China’s State Food and Drug Administration.

Sinovac’s vaccine, Panflu 1, has been approved to …