Another new swine flu virus has made the leap to humans, though U.S. officials say it seems almost certain the virus hit a dead end.

The Centers for Disease Control reported Friday that a child from Iowa became infected with a new swine flu virus in September, though the case didn’t come to light until November.

The unnamed boy didn’t need to be hospitalized and recovered fully from the illness.

Testing later showed he’d been infected with a swine influenza virus of the H3N2 subtype, different both from the pandemic H1N1 virus and from the seasonal H3N2 viruses that have been circulating in people for decades.
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It isn’t clear how the boy became infected with the virus. He had no known contact with pigs, an eerie echo of the emergence last spring of the pandemic H1N1 virus. H1N1 was first spotted in two children from California who had had no contact with pigs or with each other.

Source/Full Story: Yahoo! Canada News

Swine flu can infect cells deeper in the lungs than seasonal flu, making people who catch it more likely to develop serious complications, research suggests.

The study published in the journal Nature Biotechnology provides the first laboratory corroboration of reports from front-line doctors.

Seasonal strains of flu attach themselves almost exclusively to cells found in the nose, throat and upper airway, producing some of influenza’s signature symptoms: a runny nose, scratchy throat and a dry cough. But the research shows that swine flu — by sticking to a greater range of receptors — can also breach cells deep in the lungs.

It comes as the Government’s chief scientific adviser said today that swine flu could reach a peak in the next month or so. Professor John Beddington said that a second wave of infections was expected “not much before October at the earliest”. Thereafter research and epidemic modelling suggested the virus would be weakened, he said.

“You can get infections coming back in a number of waves but it’s likely that the next one will be larger than any subsequent ones,” Professor Beddington told the British Science Festival at the University of Surrey.

The Government revised its planning assumptions for the swine flu pandemic last week, with 19,000 people in Britain expected to die in the “worst-case scenario”. A previous estimate put the figure at 65,000.

However, it is still estimated that up to 30 per cent of the population will fall ill. While most will get better within a week or so, some may develop secondary infections or pneumonia, which can be fatal.

Source/Full Story @:  Times Online
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Almost three-quarters (73%) of American colleges and universities are reporting cases of influenza-like illnesses among students, with the highest rates in the Southeast and Midwest, the American College Health Association says.

There were 4,045 new flu-like illness cases between Aug. 29 and Sept. 4 among 204 schools taking part in voluntary reporting, the new data show.

Most schools are not testing to confirm the virus is H1N1, or swine flu. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says nearly all the flu virus now circulating is H1N1.

So far there has been only one flu-related college death. Troy University freshman Andrew Salter, 18, of Valley, Ala., died on Sept. 4 after fighting first H1N1 and then pneumonia, says university official Herbert Reeves.

So far Washington State University in Pullman has been hardest hit, with about 2,500 cases, says the school’s Paula Adams.

Source/Full Story @: USATODAY.com
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The government rejected advice from its expert advisers on swine flu, who said there was no need for the widespread use of Tamiflu and suggested that the public should simply be told to take paracetamol.

An independent panel set up by the Department of Health warned ministers that plans to make the stockpiled drug widely available could do more harm than good, by helping the flu virus to develop resistance to the drug.

But ministers pressed ahead with a policy of mass prescription, fearing the public would not tolerate being told that the millions of doses of Tamiflu held by the state could not be used during a pandemic, one of the committee members has told the Guardian.

“It was felt … it would simply be unacceptable to the UK population to tell them we had a huge stockpile of drugs but they were not going to be made available,” Professor Robert Dingwall, a member of the Committee on Ethical Aspects of Pandemic Influenza, said.

Today one of the country’s foremost flu experts called for the national helpline to be shut down to stop hundreds of thousands of doses of Tamiflu going out in an unregulated way, which could render it useless when a more dominant strain returns in the autumn.

Source/Full Story: The Guardian

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Sunday that it would likely be Thanksgiving before the most vulnerable, high priority populations are completely vaccinated against the H1N1 or swine flu virus. In the meantime, Sebelius said parents and schools need to make back-up plans to deal with possible illness.

“We’re playing out a whole variety of scenarios,” Sebelius said on CNN’s State of the Union. “We’re preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.”

Sebelius told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King that the administration was “optimistic” it would have a vaccine available by around mid-October.

“But the regimen will take about five weeks,” Sebelius said, “A first shot, three weeks delay, second shot, and then about two weeks for full immunity. So we’re really need to work between now and Thanksgiving with lots of social mitigation – keeping kids home from school if they’re sick. I would urge every family have a back-up child care plan.”

“If a parent gets sick, was is the plan?,” Sebelius also said Sunday, “because we know the disease spreads quickly and we will not have fully immunized even priority populations until about Thanksgiving.”

“We’re looking at schools as great partners for possible vaccine programs beginning in the fall to get kids immunized as quickly as possible because this is a children’s flu,” the Obama aide also said.

Source/Full Story: CNN.com

The best thing to do is, according to the phrase being used these days is “social distancing.” We’ve always called it separation, and it works rather well.

More than 700 people have died from the swine flu virus worldwide since H1N1 emerged in April, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.

Twenty-nine of those deaths have been in the UK but the WHO is no longer giving country-by-country breakdowns.

The global death toll is about 300 up on the 429 reported two weeks ago but since then countries have been told there is no longer any need to report infections.

The figure compares with 262 confirmed deaths from bird flu in 15 countries since 2003.

The WHO report of deaths came as Britain’s chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, said pregnant women, cancer patients on chemotherapy and others with weakened immune systems may be advised to stay away from crowds for “a few weeks” when the swine flu pandemic reaches its height, probably this autumn.

Mothers-to-be are at present not being recommended to cut back on normal activities such as going to work, using public transport or attending events and family gatherings, but that could change if swine flu reached a level of, for example, one in three of the population.

But Donaldson also said some pregnant women may wish to exercise their choice now “on a highly precautionary basis, to avoid large, densely populated gatherings where they have little control over personal contact”.

Donaldson has been attempting to clarify official advice since confusion emerged at the weekend over exactly what it meant.

Source/Full Story::  guardian.co.uk
Technorati Tags: social distancing, H1N1, swine flu, separation

The Government is unlikely to keep schools closed in the autumn as it would be “too disruptive” despite scientists claiming it could cut the number of swine flu cases by up to 45 per cent.

Researchers from the department of infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College London said that asking parents to keep their children at home in September could stifle transmission and buy time to produce vaccines.

Professor Neil Ferguson and Dr Simon Cauchemez quoted a recent French study that said that proactive school closures, before mass infections took hold in the close confines of school classrooms, would cut the number of swine flu cases by 13 to 17 per cent overall and by between 38 and 45 per cent at the peak of the outbreak.

The swine flu virus has been disproportionately prevalent in young children.

“It is… hoped that closure of schools during the pandemic might break the chains of transmission, with the following potential benefits,” they wrote in the Lancet medical journal.

“(These are) reducing the total number of cases; slowing the epidemic to give more time for vaccine production; and reducing the incidence of cases at the peak of the epidemic, limiting both the stress on healthcare systems and peak absenteeism in the general population.”

Source/Full Story: Times Online

The way swine flu multiplies in the respiratory system is more severe than ordinary winter flu, a new study in animals finds.

Tests in monkeys, mice and ferrets show that the swine flu thrives in greater numbers all over the respiratory system, including the lungs, and causes lesions, instead of staying in the nose and throat like seasonal flu.

In addition, blood tests show that many people who born before the 1918 flu pandemic seem to have immunity to the current swine flu, but not to the seasonal flu that hits every year.

The research by a top University of Wisconsin flu researcher was released Monday and will be published in the journal Nature.

“I’m very concerned because clearly the (swine flu) virus is different from seasonal influenza,” said study lead author Yoshishiro Kawaoka. “It’s a lot more severe.”

Source/Full Story: NBC Chicago

Parts of Britain are in the grip of a swine flu epidemic today after the first healthy child died of the virus that is sweeping the country.

Chloe Buckley, six, died within 48 hours of complaining of a sore throat and just a day before her seventh birthday.

She was not given the anti-viral drug Tamiflu after her doctor apparently misdiagnosed her illness as tonsillitis.

It was also announced yesterday that Dr Michael Day, a 64-year-old GP who had been treating swine flu victims, had died after contracting the virus.

Both the little girl and the doctor are believed to have been perfectly healthy before succumbing to swine flu.

Three people with no previous health problems have now died of the illness out of a total of 17 deaths across Britain.

Experts have moved to reassure the public that swine flu is no more contagious than the normal seasonal flu, and for most of those who catch it, the illness will be mild.

‘The vast majority of people will recover quickly by taking paracetamol or ibuprofen, and drinking plenty of fluids,’ said Dr Laurence Buckman, chairman of the BMA’s GP committee.

Source/Full Story: Mail Online

The worldwide supply of a pandemic influenza vaccine will take twice as long to manufacture and countries could have barely half of what they need for the fall’s flu season if current production problems persist, the World Health Organization revealed Monday.

Canadian health authorities admitted that not everyone will receive the vaccine at the start of the flu season, as they scrambled to prioritize which groups would move to the head of the queue. Pharmaceutical manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline Inc. is under contract to produce enough vaccine for all Canadians who wish to receive it, but it’s unclear how quickly the vaccine will be rolled out and even if most will be vaccinated in the event the virus returns with a vengeance this fall.

Still, Canada and other affluent countries are better off having lined up manufacturers and purchased the bulk of the vaccine. The WHO urged wealthier nations to hand over vital pandemic influenza vaccines to poorer nations – a tall order in the face of dwindling supplies.

The federal government said it is considering the WHO’s request, but health authorities stressed that Canadians would get first priority.

“ The vaccines may not come all at once and we can’t vaccinate everybody at the same time ”— Theresa Tam, Public Health Agency of Canada

Fear of a limited supply was sparked Monday after the WHO revealed that the race to produce an H1N1 vaccine has achieved “poor” results because the new virus strain is not growing fast enough in the eggs used as a mainstay of flu vaccine production. Manufacturers report that the swine flu strains being used are barely producing half as much yield to make vaccines as the seasonal flu virus. If the problem persists, the vaccine wouldn’t be immediately available for everyone.

Source/Full Story: The Globe and Mail

In 1976 the swine flu vaccine killed more Americans than the disease did.

A swine flu vaccine will be fast-tracked for use in Britain within five days once it is developed, and 130 million doses are on order.

The Department of Health expects to have enough vaccine this year to give it to half the population. Further supplies will be available if needed. Each person will need two doses of the vaccine, unless one single jab is found to provide high rates of immunity.

The first doses specific to the H1N1 swine flu virus are set to arrive in September and could be given regulatory approval in less than a week.

The move came after the first British patient without underlying health problems died from swine flu, taking the number of swine flu-linked deaths in Britain to 15. Peter Holden, the British Medical Association’s lead negotiator on swine flu, said that GPs’ surgeries were prepared for one of the biggest winter vaccination campaigns in almost 50 years. He said that, although swine flu was not generally causing serious illness in patients, health officials were eager to start a mass vaccination campaign, starting first on groups that were susceptible to infection or prone to complications.

Source/Full Story: Times Online

The Obama administration warned Americans on Thursday to be ready for an aggressive return of the swine flu virus in the fall, announcing plans to begin vaccinations in October and offering states and hospitals money to help them prepare.

“The potential for a significant outbreak in the fall is looming,” President Obama said by telephone link from Italy to the White House’s H1N1 Influenza Preparedness Summit, held at the National Institutes of Health.

With good planning, “we may end up averting a crisis,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s our fervent hope.”

The summit meeting was jointly led by the secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius; the secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano; and the secretary of education, Arne Duncan. It gathered health and school officials from across the country and took questions by video link from the governors of several states, most of whom wanted to know who would pay for preparations like the vaccination drive.

Vaccinations will begin in October only if tests scheduled to begin in August prove that the vaccine is safe and effective. Even then, officials expect only tens of millions of doses to be ready, so they will have to decide who is vaccinated first. The most likely candidates, Ms. Sebelius said, are school children, health care workers, pregnant women and people with asthma or other conditions that make the flu riskier.

While health officials were careful to warn that there was no evidence that the flu had mutated into a more dangerous form, they noted that it seriously disrupted some cities, including New York, in the late spring and could do worse as the fall flu season begins.

“This flu is not over,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the new head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, describing its continuing spread in more than 50 summer camps, the large numbers of cases seen in Chile, Argentina and Australia, which are now at the beginning of their flu season, and the initial detections of three cases resistant to the drug Tamiflu.

Source/Full Story: NYTimes.com

Tamiflu-resistant swine flu was found in a teenager who hadn’t taken Roche Holding AG’s best-selling antiviral medicine, Hong Kong’s health department said.

…This marks the first known case of Tamiflu resistance in a swine flu patient not treated with the drug, which has been stockpiled by governments worldwide to fight pandemic influenza. The specimen was collected from a 16-year-old girl who flew from San Francisco and was intercepted by officials at Hong Kong International Airport on June 11, according to the statement.

…

Denmark, Japan

Basel, Switzerland-based Roche said on June 29 that a swine flu patient treated with Tamiflu in Denmark showed resistance to the drug for the first time. Japan’s health ministry reported a case of resistance yesterday in a woman from Osaka who had taken a 10-day course.

Studies have shown that Tamiflu-resistant bugs develop in 0.4 percent to 4 percent of adults and children treated for seasonal influenza, Claudia Schmitt, a spokeswoman at Roche, said by phone from Basel today.

It’s likely the few reported cases of drug-resistant swine flu emerged independently, Hong Kong University’s Peiris said.

“The key point is whether the strains will become dominant and then we will have a problem,” he said. “At this moment, I don’t think there is cause for alarm. There is certainly cause for heightened surveillance.”

Source/Full Story: Bloomberg.com

Uganda’s Health Ministry says the country has confirmed its first case of H1N1 swine flu.

Ugandan health official James Kakooza said Thursday that a 40-year-old British man tested positive for the virus after arriving in Entebbe on June 26. 
Kakooza said the man came from London through Nairobi, Kenya.

Uganda is the seventh sub-Saharan nation to report swine flu cases – along with Kenya, Cape Verde, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Mauritius, and South Africa.

The World Health Organization said that as of Wednesday, 332 people have died from the swine flu virus, and more than 77,000 people have been diagnosed worldwide.

In June, the WHO declared an influenza pandemic for the first time in more than 40 years.
The H1N1 strain of swine flu is a highly contagious new virus that quickly spread around the world this year.

Source/Full Story: VOA News

Oregon health authorities have confirmed the state’s second known death — in a young Marion County child — from the new H1N1 influenza virus, also known as swine flu.

The child, identified only as “younger than 5 years old,” died June 15, and infection with the swine flu virus was confirmed by the Oregon State Public Health Laboratory Tuesday. The child had “no known underlying medical conditions and a two-day history of fever,” and was not hospitalized, officials said.

Source/Full Story: OregonLive.com