By Lee-Anne Goodman, The Canadian Press

WASHINGTON - A new poll suggests most Americans don't plan to get inoculated against H1N1 even as the virus spreads across the United States, hundreds of schools close and politicians on Capitol Hill fret about an inadequate supply of the vaccine.

The Washington Post/ABC News survey, published Thursday, suggests many Americans are wary of the swine flu shot. About six in 10 respondents said they have no plans to get vaccinated, and only 52 per cent of parents said they would get their children the vaccine.

This despite hordes of people showing up at the few clinics in the U.S. this week that have managed to snag doses of the elusive vaccine. Hundreds of schools have been closed in 15 states because of swine flu, with more than 65,000 students affected.

H1N1 vaccine production in the U.S. has lagged behind projections, with only enough available for half the population. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the shot won't be widely available until mid-November

It's that very shortfall that some Americans cite in their decision to forgo a vaccination.

"I have no plans to get one," Chelsea Samuel, 26, of Charlotte, N.C., said Thursday. "I'm healthy with a good immune system and no long-term issues. I'd rather leave it for people who need one. If I were around kids on a regular basis, though, I would get one."

Morgan Baden, 30, who works in publishing in New York City, agrees.

"I got the regular flu shot for free at work, but I won't get the swine flu one. I just think other people need it more," Baden said. "It's already in short supply, so I think kids and people who work on the front lines with kids or the general public should be up first."

Canada, on the other hand, has an adequate supply for its population. The country's largest-ever immunization campaign began Thursday in some parts of the country after Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq declared the vaccine approved for use.

The blame for the delays in the U.S. has been placed in part on so-called chicken-egg technology, a 50-year-old procedure that involves injecting virus into eggs and allowing it to feast on the nutrients in the egg white.

It's a sluggish process because H1N1 reproduces slowly in eggs. The additional pressure on U.S. manufacturers to produce two vaccines at the same time - for both swine flu and ordinary flu - is causing further slowdowns. Flu vaccines are also not nearly as lucrative for big American pharmaceutical companies as other kinds of drugs.

Canada's abundant supply of H1N1, meantime, was noted with envy on Wednesday during a Congressional hearing into the swine flu crisis on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Joe Lieberman told a Senate committee that the American shortfall of swine-flu vaccine is a result, in part, of countries like Canada choosing to make their own populations a priority. Ottawa pressured Canadian manufacturers to take care of the needs of the Canadian population before they could make vaccine available to the U.S., Lieberman said.

"It's exactly what we would do with an American producer, and it just puts an exclamation point on the importance of developing domestic capacity for production of vaccine in these cases," he said.

"I'm not blaming Canada, but I suppose in some sense you could say that the ... shortage of the vaccine today, beneath what we would want it to be, is attributable to foreign countries telling their local manufacturers, 'Hey, you've got to fill our needs before you fill anybody else's."'

But one American who badly wants the vaccine - 29-year-old Katie Hentges of Jefferson City, Mo. - says the blame lies with U.S. officials who failed to anticipate the scope of the H1N1 crisis.

"I'm not miffed at all at Canada," said Hentges, an asthmatic who fears the flu could hit her hard if she catches it. "It's not their fault that Americans are short-sighted and have the dumbest health-care system on the planet."

Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was grilled this week about the delays, and assured the Senate committee that the problem with chicken-egg technology is being dealt with - the U.S. government is funding newer technologies that hold the promise of a speedier and more reliable vaccine supply, she said.

The government has awarded a US$487 million contract to Novartis for a plant in North Carolina that will make flu vaccine by growing the virus inside animal cells, preferably from mammals. The plant is expected to be up and running by 2011 or 2012.

Another drug company, Protein Sciences Corp., has landed a five-year, US$147-million contract to develop a vaccine using a technology that grows flu proteins in insect cells. Officials are hopeful the first doses could be available within 12 weeks of the start of a pandemic, twice as fast as vaccine produced from chicken eggs.