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So far, that isn't enough to prevent long lines at vaccination centers, but it is consistent with what officials had projected earlier this week.

"We're having a steady increase in the availability of vaccine, but not nearly as rapidly as we would have liked," Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters during an afternoon teleconference. "That is encouraging, but it is not nearly as much as we would like. We realize it is frustrating and inconvenient [to patients and to physicians]. As public health professionals, it is frustrating because, in part, many people who seek the vaccine will not get vaccinated later. They might not come back. We ask people to continue to be persistent."

Several local hospitals are closing their doors to young visitors, joining medical facilities nationwide that have implemented similar policies in an effort to stem the spread of the H1N1, or swine flu, virus.

El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City, and Northern California Kaiser Permanente all recently announced they are restricting visits by youths, according to representatives. On Friday, Kaiser started barring visitors 14 years old and under and Sequoia imposed a similar policy for those under 16. El Camino will not allow visitors under 16 beginning Monday.

The hospitals are making exceptions on a case-by-case basis, including those where a family member may be dying, for example. Hospital representatives say it's a necessary step to protect patients and visitors.

A second kind of vaccine against cervical cancer may be added to the recommended list for girls and young women after a federal advisory panel voted Wednesday to support it.

The panel gave a limited endorsement to GlaxoSmithKline's vaccine, Cervarix, which the government licensed last week. Merck & Co. has had the vaccine Gardasil on the market since 2006.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices did not state a preference for one vaccine over the other. But officials noted that while both protect against cervical cancer, the older Merck vaccine also protects against genital warts.

H1N1 flu may be the most talked about bug, but the old-fashioned seasonal flu -- which kills more than 33,000 Americans annually -- is still a threat, and vaccines for the seasonal flu are running low in some places in metro Detroit.

Oakland County health officials said that they exhausted their supply of seasonal flu vaccine Thursday.

By late Thursday afternoon, Macomb County had about 4,400 vaccines left out of 17,000 ordered, said Tom Kalkofen, director of the county health department. Wayne County was down to a couple hundred doses, though officials there have administered most of their yearly allotment.

Anxiety over a potential H1N1 epidemic is rising, as a majority of Americans believe the virus is a serious health hazard, according to a new survey.

About 58 percent of Americans think that the swine flu poses a serious threat to their health, according to the survey from Burlington, Mass.-based Silverlink Communications Inc., a health care communications firm.The results mark an increase compared to May 2009, when about 47 percent of Americans considered the swine flu to be a serious health threat.

More than one in three U.S. teen girls has had at least one shot of Gardasil, a CDC survey shows, but only 18% of girls got the three shots needed for protection.

The survey includes girls vaccinated through 2008, two years after Gardasil's approval. A second HPV vaccine, GlaxoSmithKline's Cervarix, is expected to be approved this year.

The West Nile virus was found in mosquitoes from two locations in Brookline this week, according to the Massachusetts Department of Health, bringing the tally of communities with confirmed cases to 18.

The wet weather in early summer, followed by hot weather in August, resulted in more mosquitoes than usual, said Jennifer Manley, spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Health. While last year’s West Nile counts were higher - disease-carrying mosquitoes were identified in 59 municipalities and 11 counties - people can be bitten for several more weeks before chilly weather kills the bugs.

Several automobile companies have been taking steps towards the implementation of hybrid technologies, and Ford is not about to be left behind. On Tuesday, it announced the development of a control system that would allow its electric cars to communicate with electric grids to adjust the timing of its charging schedule. The technology is designed for use in Ford's plug-in hybrid cars that will reach the market by 2012.

Many magazine photos show babies sleeping in unsafe positions, according to researchers at Children's National Medical Center.

Sudden infant death syndrome researcher Dr. Rachel Moon analyzed pictures of sleeping babies in 24 magazines that are widely read by 20- to 40-year-old women.

More than one-third of the photos had problems, according to a news release on the work.

Researchers have found a genetic mutation in two people who need far less sleep than average, a discovery that might open the door to understanding human sleep patterns and lead to treatments for insomnia and other sleep disorders.

The finding, published in the Friday issue of the journal Science, marks the first time scientists have identified a genetic mutation that relates to sleep duration in any animal or human.