Beijing has moved up its schedule of flu prevention from November to September, in case of the probable widespread epidemic this year, said Wu Jiang, director of the municipal disease control and privation center Saturday.

Citizens in Beijing will be inoculated with new vaccines since next Monday.

Wu said experts with World Health Organization (WHO) have analyzed the results accumulated from the worldwide monitoring posts and predicted a big possibility of a widespread flu epidemic this autumn.

The wide outbreak of avian flu in many Asian countries earlier this year might trigger a big scale of human influenza, according to WHO experts.

The experts also noted that the flu vaccines of the northern hemisphere have undergone great changes in 2004 compared with those of the last year.

Wu said Beijing has stored sufficient vaccines against the flu, which will be sold to citizens at three different prices.

People could select the vaccine types according to their needs, said Wu, stressing that all should take the vaccines and be inoculated through the official channel.

Source: Xinhua