As the country’s death toll rose by seven, to a total of 21, health authorities announced that vaccinations of children aged between six and five years could begin within weeks.

The said official statistics revealed one to four-year-olds had been hardest hit by the disease, but parents are split on whether they would vaccinate their children.

The National Public Health Service (NPHS) for Wales has sought to reinforce the pro-vaccination message, saying that the vaccine was the most effective tool to combat swine flu, which could be very serious in a small number of people.

A spokesman for the NHPS has urged that people to take the vaccine in all cases where it was being offered.

However Sarah Matthews, a 35 year-old mother of three-year-old twin boys from Cilfew, close to Neath, wasn’t convinced, saying that it seemed to be like the introduction of the vaccine was rushed, and that no real tests have been done on it.

But Leighton Jones of Glyncorrwg, near Port Talbot, whose 17-month son Alfie was vaccinated two weeks ago, said that the specialists did tell inform her that they didn’t know about the after-effects, but it was fine.

Work on the vaccine has progressed quickly, as drug companies had begun working on a vaccination as soon as the pandemic began to spread across the globe earlier this year.

Initial trials of the vaccine began in Australia in July and up to 1,000 children in the UK were involved in a two-week trial in September to establish which of the two vaccines worked better.

Director of the communicable disease surveillance centre at the NPHS for Wales, Dr Roland Salmon, said that the vaccine against swine flu had been tested and approved, and is now being offered to people most at risk of complications from the virus, as well as frontline health and social care workers.