Flu vaccines may not arrive in Bermuda for another four weeks and there will be fewer doses to go around this year, The Royal Gazette has learned.

The Island is expecting less than 4,000 doses of the vaccine this year as opposed to between 6,000 and 7,000 in past years, Dr. Brenda Davidson of the Health Department said yesterday.

The Health Department cut back its order due to the long delay in the arrival of the vaccine, she said.

"The vaccines are being held up in the States," said Dr. Davidson. "Each year they change the vaccine slightly and the last two years we've been informed the changes have been slow in evolving in the laboratories. Production seems to be put back a little longer each year."

In order to maintain immunity, people must be revaccinated against the flu every year as the strain continues to evolve.

Dr. Davidson said the Health Department has known since May that the vaccines would arrive late. They are expected to arrive by the end of the month or early December.

"We will try to get a small supply earlier in order for high risk people to vaccinated," she said.

The Health department will contact those considered to be high risk for flu - the chronically ill, the elderly, women in late pregnancy - when the first supplies are received, she said.

The United States is also scrambling for flu vaccines and manufacturers are expected to produce 85 million vaccines this year - up from 72 million in 2000 - by December.

The US is urging high risk individuals to get vaccinated in the hope of preventing cases of the flu being mistaken for anthrax and overwhelming the country's emergency rooms.

The early symptoms of anthrax strongly resemble the flu - achy muscles, headaches, sniffles, a fever, a sore throat.

To date in the US, four people have died as a result of inhaled anthrax infections in the past month and another 13 cases of either skin or inhalation infections have been confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

But while anthrax hysteria is running high as the US struggles to contain any bioterrorism threat, the flu may actually claim more lives.

On average 20,000 people die each year as a result of the flu, most of them over 65 years of age.

Dr. Davidson said yesterday that getting a flu vaccination is a good start to lessen false fears of anthrax.

But, she pointed out the vaccines only provide 80 percent protection against flu, so some of those vaccinated may still catch the flu and need not panic and believe they have been exposed to anthrax.

"Getting vaccinated is a good idea but not necessarily the whole answer," Dr. Davidson said.