Indeed, be not complacent in this regard, but continue onward with diligence and patience. The vaccine I wouldn’t touch with a 10 meter cattle prod, but the tactic of separation or “social distancing” is still, IMHO, the best method for decreasing the risk of infection.  And get some Sambucol, it really works well.

H1N1 cases have continued to drop since December and into the first weeks of 2010, but health officials say now is not the time to assume the worst is over.

“We want and need to avoid complacency,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, a director with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said last week. “Having as many people vaccinated as possible is our best course of action, even if we can’t read the tea leaves of the future.”

Source/Full Story: The SouthtownStar

The head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration defended the agency’s decision not to use an additive that could have stretched swine flu vaccine supplies, adding that doses should be coming more regularly.

The vaccine to prevent the H1N1 strain of influenza has been in short supply following production issues but more doses are becoming available, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said on Thursday at the Reuters Health Summit in New York.

“The gap between need and availability is narrowing. I think we are going to see doses coming off the lines and into people’s arms or noses on a regular basis now,” Hamburg said.

U.S. health officials have been scrambling to get the swine flu vaccine to market after the virus emerged too late to be included in this year’s regular seasonal flu version. Initially, officials said there would be enough for everyone, but the public quickly grew frustrated when supplies ran short.

The FDA has approved H1N1 vaccine from five makers who already produce seasonal flu vaccine — GlaxoSmithKline Plc, AstraZeneca Plc’s MedImmune unit, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis, and CSL Limited.

Both products use an egg-based technology to produce the vaccine, but the H1N1 virus grew slower than expected in the eggs, Hamburg said. She added the agency is working with manufacturers to move toward other, more efficient technology such as cell-based cultures that could spur production.

Hamburg said it was not too late for people to benefit from immunization.

Source/Full Story: Reuters
Technorati Tags: H1N1

In Ukraine, schools have been closed, all public events have been banned and restrictions imposed on people’s movements after the country confirmed its first death from H1N1 swine flu.

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko announced a three-week period of precautionary measures and health officials are said to be considering introducing quarantine across the country..

An outbreak of flu and pneumonia has killed 30 people in western Ukraine since mid-October, but until now officials have been insisting the H1N1 strain was not the cause.

A health ministry spokeswoman said not all the dead were tested, but checks on one body have proved positive.

In western Ukraine more than 5,000 flu cases have been registered during the last week. Tests are now being carried out to determine the origin of the virus.

Source/Full Story:  euronews
Technorati Tags: Ukraine, H1N1

The federal government originally promised 120 million doses of swine flu vaccine by now. Only 13 million have come through.

As nervous Americans clamor for the vaccine, production is running several weeks behind schedule, and health officials blame the pressure on pharmaceutical companies to crank it out along with the ordinary flu vaccine, and a slow and antiquated process that relies on millions of chicken eggs.

There have been other bottlenecks, too: Factories that put the precious liquid into syringes have become backed up. And the government itself ran into a delay in developing the tests required to assess each batch before it is cleared for use.

What effect the delays will have on the course of the outbreak is unclear, in part because scientists cannot say with any certainty just how dangerous the virus is, how easily it spreads, or whether it will mutate into a more lethal form.

“We’re in this race against the virus, and only Mother Nature knows how many cases are going to occur over the next six to 10 weeks,” said Michael Osterholm, a vaccine expert at the University of Minnesota.

Source/Full Story:  msnbc.com
Technorati Tags: H1N1

U.S. health officials have lost track of how many illnesses and deaths have been caused by the first global flu epidemic in 40 years.

And they did it on purpose.

Government doctors stopped counting swine flu cases in July, when they estimated more than 1 million were infected in this country. The number of deaths has been sitting at more than 600 since early September.

Other nations have stopped relying on lab-confirmed cases, too, and health officials say the current monitoring system is adequate. But not having specific, accurate counts of swine flu means the government doesn’t have a clear picture of how hard the infection is hitting some groups of people, said Andrew Pekosz, a flu expert at Johns Hopkins University.

The novel H1N1 flu seems to be more dangerous for children, young adults, pregnant women and even the obese, according to studies based on small numbers of patients. But exactly how much more at risk those people are is hard to gauge if the overall numbers are fuzzy.

“This wasn’t as critical early on, when case numbers were low,” said Pekosz. But now, it’s hard to say exactly how swine flu’s dangers vary from group to group, he said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is relying on a patchwork system of gathering death and hospitalization numbers. Some states are reporting lab-confirmed cases. Others report illnesses that could be the new swine flu, seasonal flu or some other respiratory disease.

Some say that’s a more sensible approach than only counting lab-confirmed cases. Many people who got sick never get tested, so the tally of swine flu cases was off almost from the very beginning, they say.

“It was a vast underestimate,” said Dr. Zack Moore, a respiratory disease expert for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

Source/Full Story: Yahoo! News
Technorati Tags: swine flu, H1N1

Mexico was hit with 1,341 new swine flu cases since Monday, bringing the total to 26,338 ahead of the usual autumn flu season, health officials said on Friday.

The Health Ministry said one more person died from the A(H1N1) virus between Monday and Thursday, bringing the death toll to 218 in the country where the virus first emerged in April before becoming a pandemic.

In late August, Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova estimated that nearly one million people could be infected by the virus during the winter, out of a total population of 100 million in Mexico.

The global flu death toll has reached 3,486, up 281 from a week ago, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which has reported 296,471 known cases of infection.

That number is seen as far below actual figures as some countries lack systematic analysis.

The UN agency said the Americas region still has the highest death toll, at 2,625. The Asia-Pacific region reported 620 fatalities, while Europe recorded at least 140 deaths. In the Middle East, 61 people succumbed to the virus while in Africa, 40 people have died from it.

Source/Full Story: The Times of India
Technorati Tags: H1N1

Swine flu vaccinations may begin in three weeks, earlier than previously anticipated, after the first U.S. tests found a single shot to be effective in eight to 10 days, U.S. health officials said.

The first shots may be available by the end of this month and administered to patients the first week of October, said Nancy Cox, director of the flu division at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Health officials had previously planned for vaccinations to begin in mid-October, requiring two shots administered three weeks apart.

Swine flu outbreaks have rippled across U.S. schools and universities after pupils returned to classes in the past few weeks. Washington State University reported more than 2,500 cases, and the CDC last week reported a nationwide spike of influenza cases months earlier than the past three flu seasons. The test results are boosting hopes the vaccine may be available in time to curb the first pandemic in 41 years, Cox said.

“We were anticipating that it would begin mid-October,” Cox told reporters today at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in San Francisco. “This was a conservative estimate but it was a necessary conservative estimate. We now feel that we will have vaccine for more people earlier and this is extremely good news.”

Source/Full Story:: Bloomberg.com
Technorati Tags: vaccinations, Swine Flu

Polio, the dreaded paralyzing disease stamped out in the industrialized world, is spreading in Nigeria. And health officials say in some cases, it’s caused by the vaccine used to fight it.

In July, the World Health Organization issued a warning that this vaccine-spread virus might extend beyond Africa. So far, 124 Nigerian children have been paralyzed this year — about twice those afflicted in 2008.

The polio problem is just the latest challenge to global health authorities trying to convince wary citizens that vaccines can save them from dreaded disease. For years, myths have abounded about vaccines — that they were the Western world’s plan to sterilize Africans or give them AIDS. The sad polio reality fuels misguided fears and underscores the challenges authorities face using a flawed vaccine.

Nigeria and most other poor nations use an oral polio vaccine because it’s cheaper, easier, and protects entire communities.

But it is made from a live polio virus — albeit weakened — which carries a small risk of causing polio for every million or so doses given. In even rarer instances, the virus in the vaccine can mutate into a deadlier version that ignites new outbreaks.

The vaccine used in the United States and other Western nations is given in shots, which use a killed virus that cannot cause polio.

So when WHO officials discovered a polio outbreak in Nigeria was sparked by the polio vaccine itself, they assumed it would be easier to stop than a natural “wild” virus.

They were wrong.

Source/Full Story: Boston.com

More than 13 million Britons will be offered the first doses of a vaccine against swine flu this autumn, in a dramatic move which the government says will save lives.

The initial stage of a mass immunisation campaign will see almost 11 million people in four priority groups, mostly those whose health puts them at risk from the pandemic, invited to have a course of two injections three weeks apart, probably starting in October.

More than two million health and social care workers, including GPs, hospital staff and care home personnel, will also be asked to have the jabs in a bid to help the NHS cope with the expected second big surge of the H1N1 virus.

The escalation of the fight against the pandemic will see the four most at-risk groups vaccinated in order of priority. They are people aged between six months and 65 with chronic conditions such as breathing difficulties, diabetes and heart disease, followed by pregnant women, then people living with those in the first group and finally people over 65.

Sir Liam Donaldson, the government’s chief medical officer, said that children and babies under six months old with no health problems would not be among those who would have the vaccine.

A decision about whether and how healthy adults will be offered the jabs will be made in a few months’ time, once health officials have studied how the pandemic is affecting health at that time. The immunisations are dependent on licenses being granted by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which is expected in late September or early October.

Source/Full Story: The Guardian

Also read this essay on The Spanish Flu in Spokane.  Very interesting.  Schools were closed then from October until December.

By October 8, Dr. Anderson declared that Spokane was in the throes of the influenza epidemic, and ordered that as of midnight, all schools, theaters, places of amusement, dance halls, churches, and Sunday Schools would be closed and that conventions and other public meetings were prohibited. Schools were closed the next day and students who showed up were sent home. I remember that day very well. To us boys, it was an unexpected vacation that allowed us to play war all day long. We had converted one of our friend’s backyard into a battlefield with trenches, dug-outs and other trappings of the battlefield. Clods of dirt made very good hand grenades and we got pretty good at lobbing them at each other.

Anyone who knows anything about the educational system here in the US today should feel relatively safe in the knowledge that closing schools because of swine flu will have no negative impact whatsoever on the “education” of the children.  Now, parents staying home from work to attend to their sick children might very well have a negative impact on the economy, but what’s the real priority exactly?   Money or the health and well being your children?

The Obama administration is finalizing guidelines that would scale back when the federal government recommends closing schools in response to the swine flu pandemic, several people involved in the deliberations said Monday.

More targeted guidance would mark a change in the government’s approach from this spring, when health officials suggested that schools shut down at the first sign of the H1N1 virus. They later relaxed that advice.

This fall, federal authorities would recommend closures only under “extenuating circumstances,” such as if a campus has many children with underlying medical conditions, a senior U.S. health official involved in the talks said. The official added that discussions are continuing and that no decision has been made.

Schools also might be advised to close if many students or staff members are already sick or otherwise absent, officials said.

“The framework is to try to keep schools open to the extent possible,” the senior health official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the White House has not completed its review of the issue.

School closings this past spring raised questions about whether closings slow the spread of H1N1 and are worth the educational and economic cost. The federal government’s decision could have a far-reaching effect on tens of millions of Americans, the economy and other countries wrestling with similar choices.

Source/Full Story: washingtonpost.com

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

Florida’s surgeon general says the state is preparing for massive swine flu immunizations, starting with schoolchildren, as the Obama administration urges states to prepare for the likelihood that the virus might worsen in the fall.

”We may end up averting a crisis. That’s our hope,” said President Barack Obama, who took time away from the G-8 summit in Italy to telephone another summit back home — the 500 state and local health officials meeting to prepare for swine flu’s fall threat.

”We want to make sure we aren’t promoting panic, but we are promoting vigilance and preparation,” Obama said.

Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, told the swine flu summit some H1N1 vaccine should be ready by mid-October.

”Scientists and public health experts forecast that the impact of H1N1 may well worsen in the fall, when the regular flu season hits or even earlier, when schools start to open, which is only five or six weeks away,” she said.

Florida already is planning for such vaccinations, said Dr. Ana M. Viamonte Ros, Florida surgeon general, as she emerged from the summit.

”We’re already meeting with local schools and day-care centers on how we would do this,” she said. “By mid-October we won’t have doses for everyone. The vaccines will have to be directed toward individuals at high risk. It’s important to determine who really is at risk. With swine flu, more of the younger ages are affected. That puts more stress on schools.”

Source/Full Story: floridatoday.com

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

The number of people known to have died after contracting swine flu has doubled in three days, officials said today.

Fourteen people infected with the virus are now known to have died as thousands of people seek medical help with their symptoms every day.

At least 335 people have needed hospital treatment after contracting the H1N1 flu strain with the level of infection in London already reaching epidemic levels. Of these, 43 were still said to be in a “critical condition”.

The figures mean that Britain now has the third highest number of cases of swine flu in the world after the US and Mexico, Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, said. The virus has caused hundreds of deaths worldwide.

But health officials said that the health service was “coping well” with outbreaks of illness as most cases were mild and did not require medical treatment.

Sir Liam admitted it was unknown how many people in the UK were truly suffering from the virus as many people would be treating themselves at home rather than contacting their GP.

The latest figures from the Government suggest that as many as 27,000 people in England and Wales contacted their GP complaining about “flu-like illness” in a single week, with the worst-affected areas being London and the West Midlands.

Source/Full Story: Times Online

About 150 people have fallen ill aboard a cruise ship berthed in Scotland following a suspected outbreak of the vomit-inducing norovirus, health officials said Monday.

…”NHS Highland can confirm that around 150 people on board a cruise ship docked at Invergordon have become unwell with suspected norovirus,” he said.

…Germany-based operators Transocean Tours said the man’s death earlier Monday was unrelated to the outbreak, saying he had chronic heart and breathing problems and “suffered a fatal heart attack on board ship”.

It said 769 passengers and 340 crew were on the Marco Polo and its medical team had reported that 54 passengers and 21 crew “have an unconfirmed virus that causes a form of gastroenteritis”.

Norovirus is highly contagious and induces vomiting and diarrhea. It affects between 600,000 and one million people in Britain each year and outbreaks are common within contained environments.

Passengers on the world-famous Queen Elizabeth II luxury liner were struck by an outbreak in 2007.

Source/Full Story: breitbart.com