This 1976 photograph showed an elderly female as she was receiving a vaccination by a public health clinician during the nationwide swine flu vaccination campaign, which began October 1, 1976.
This rare influenza strain, “A/New Jersey/76 (Hsw1N1) influenza virus”, against which this individual was being vaccinated, was reported among soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey, where one patient died. A very similar strain killed 500,000 people in the United States, and more than 20 million worldwide, during the pandemic of 1918-1919. In response to the 1976 outbreak, in order to prevent another epidemic, 50 million Americans were vaccinated during a 10 week period, setting an immunization world record.
