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

Health experts say extraordinary measures against swine flu — most notably quarantines imposed by China, where entire planeloads of passengers were isolated if one traveler had symptoms — have failed to contain the disease.

Despite initially declaring success, Beijing now acknowledges its swine flu outbreak is much larger than official numbers show.

China’s official count of some 63,000 reported illnesses with 53 deaths dwarfs estimates of millions of cases with nearly 4,000 deaths in the United States, a nation with about a third of China’s population.

Dr. Michael O’Leary, WHO’s top representative in China, says there has been a dramatic spike in Chinese swine flu cases recently and those reported by the government are only “minimum numbers.”

“We have new cases occurring all the time,” he told The Associated Press last week. “There’s always more deaths than we could possibly know about.”

Source/Full Story:  Yahoo! News
Technorati Tags: H1N1

The new flu strain, which I contend is spreading in Ukraine and Belarus, is characterized by a lightning form of viral pneumonia — very similar to what happened in 1918. The new flu virus appears to have profound tissue affinity for sialic acid receptors deep in the lungs, replicating in the alveoli. To put it mildly, the lungs fill with blood. Quotes from Ukrainian officials included quotes such as “total destruction of the lungs.” Ukrainian Doctor Viktor Bachinsky has stated, “The virus causing the deaths is extremely aggressive — it doesn’t first infect the throat (as is common in flu), but strikes the lungs directly.” In Ukraine’s western Chernovetsky region, an epicenter of the outbreak, doctors have said lab tests showed at least some of the fatalties appeared to be caused by a flu dissimilar to both common flu and swine flu. In other words, a mutant flu. This claim of a ‘mutant flu’ has been echoed by Ukrainian public health officials such as Dr. Vasyl Lazoryshynetz. Unfortunately, as noted in the above Russia Today video, pharmacies across the country are sold out of antivirals. To the hard of thinking — yes, this is currently happening in Ukraine.

Source/Full Story: zero hedge

It took the strength of two sheriff’s deputies to keep a middle schooler still enough to receive a shot of the swine flu, or H1N1, vaccine at a recent clinic.

During a regular Wheeling-Ohio County Health Board meeting Tuesday, health department Administrator Howard Gamble told board members about the student’s attempt to flee Wheeling Middle School during a vaccination clinic held there last Friday.

He noted the boy’s mother could not bear to watch the scene and left the gymnasium. Out of apparent fear of receiving the injection, the student ran out of the building. The school’s resource officer, Ohio County Sheriff’s Deputy John Haglock, coaxed the boy back inside. Once at the shot station, however, Haglock apparently needed some help keeping the boy still, and another deputy assisted.

“He tried to run. I looked over and saw two sheriff’s deputies holding a kid down,” Gamble said. “Mom took off, she couldn’t take it. You had one nurse with the needle, two deputies holding him, one nurse is grabbing hands – because that’s what they want to do, to go after the needle. And that’s the last thing you want.”

Gamble said as soon as the nurse gave the boy his injection and told him he was done, he hopped up like nothing had happened.

“For the most part they go very easy. As far as the shots, every once in awhile you have to hold down one or two – but that’s why mom is there or dad is there,” Gamble said.

He added after the meeting that Friday’s incident was the only time Ohio County deputies have held a student during a shot.

“They’re mostly there for parking and directions. They also know the kids. … They were our first line of contact when setting up the clinics,” Gamble said.

Neither Sheriff Pat Butler nor Haglock could be reached for comment. A sheriff’s department official said Haglock is on vacation for the next two weeks.

During a clinic Tuesday at Bridge Street Middle School, similar scenes took place – though not quite as dramatic and not involving officers of the law. A couple sets of parents could be seen keeping their children from wiggling away while a nurse quickly administered the vaccine.

Source/Full Story: Wheeling News-Register

About 22 million Americans have become ill with pandemic H1N1 influenza in the past six months and 3,900 have died, according to new estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The number of pediatric deaths — about 540 — is four times as high as the number that physicians, hospitals and health departments had reported to the public health agency in Atlanta.

The new estimates, drawn from detailed surveillance and record-checking in 10 states, sketch the most detailed picture by far of the national toll from the new flu strain that emerged in California and Mexico in April.

“We feel we’re finally able to update the public on how big a toll this virus is having so far,” Anne Schuchat, a CDC physician helping to run the federal government’s pandemic response, said Thursday. “I am expecting all these numbers, unfortunately, to continue to rise.”

The total number of people who have been hospitalized is 98,000, with 36,000 of them age 17 and younger. The vast majority of deaths — about 2,920 — have been in people age 18 to 64.

In an average flu season, the seasonal virus contributes to the deaths of about 36,000 people — 90 percent of whom are 65 or older. Many are close to death, with flu being only one factor leading to their demise. That is not the case with H1N1’s victims, most of whom are much younger, and about 20 to 30 percent of whom were healthy before contracting the virus.

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

Yep…

A 14-year-old Virginia boy is weak and struggling to walk after coming down with a reported case of Guillain-Barre syndrome within hours after receiving the H1N1 vaccine for swine flu.

Jordan McFarland, a high school athlete from Alexandria, Va., left Inova Fairfax Hospital for Children Tuesday night in a wheelchair nearly a week after developing severe headaches, muscle spasms and weakness in his legs following a swine flu shot. He will likely need the assistance of a walker for four to six weeks, plus extensive physical therapy.

“The doctor said I’ll recover fully, but it’s going to take some time,” the teenager said.

Source/Full Story:: msnbc.com

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

Cases of swine flu in the UK have almost doubled this week, the Department of Health revealed today, as the outbreak imposes increasing pressure on intensive care beds.

So far 122 people have died after contracting the H1N1 virus and more than 500 are being treated in hospital, of whom 99 are in critical care – the highest figure since the disease emerged. Children appear to be vulnerable to higher rates of infection.

Emergency planners have, however, downgraded the UK’s worst case scenario, calculating this month that as many as 1,000 people could die during the pandemic infection. Far more of the victims are likely to be younger patients, unlike the normal pattern of seasonal flu, which affects the elderly most severely.

Estimates of likely casualties have come down progressively over the past few months from an initial upper assessment of 65,000 deaths, later reduced to 19,000 and now cut back again.

Source/Full Story: The Guardian
Technorati Tags: H1N1

At least one pig in the US has tested positive for the H1N1 virus, the US department of agriculture said today, the country’s first case of a pig contracting the virus.

US agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement that USDA officials have begun to reach out to US trade partners and international organisations to emphasise that H1N1, also known as swine flu, cannot be contracted by eating pork products.

“We have fully engaged our trading partners to remind them … that there is no scientific basis to restrict trade in pork and pork products,” Vilsack said. “People cannot get this flu from eating pork or pork products. Pork is safe to eat.”

The USDA’s National Veterinary Services Laboratories confirmed the presence of H1N1 after an initial test suggested that as many as three pigs may have had the virus. The USDA is continuing to conduct tests to confirm other potential positive tests from the pig samples. The original samples were taken as a part of a university research project from pigs shown at the Minnesota state fair between 26 August and 1 September.

Source/Full Story: guardian.co.uk
Technorati Tags: H1N1

Alarmed by the spread of the H1N1 flu, local hospitals restricted visitors this week, barring children and capping the number of visitors a patient can see at once.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center this week raised the minimum age for visitors from 12 to 18 and restricted the number of visitors for patients at greatest risk of becoming infected with H1N1, including those in labor and delivery, or in pediatric and neonatal intensive care units, according to Dr. Rekha Murthy, medical director of hospital epidemiology at Cedars-Sinai.

Murthy said restrictions on younger visitors make sense because children are at greater risk of catching the H1N1 flu, and may infect others before they show symptoms.

“This epidemic is different from the typical flu season, and we’re having to respond in a different way,” Murthy said. “It’s spreading like wildfire in the community and we need to protect the patients who are most vulnerable.”

Cedars-Sinai had restricted visits to at-risk patients during the spring outbreak of H1N1 flu, and the change was appreciated by patients’ families, Murthy said.

She said many area hospitals are considering similar visitor restrictions, especially those that serve transplant patients and others with compromised immune systems at risk of infection.

“Every hospital has to weigh their own populations at risk,” she said. Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys has barred children under 16 from visiting inpatient units or being left unattended in lobbies, waiting rooms or other common areas.

Hospital officials have asked those with flu-like symptoms not to visit, and have limited patients to two visitors at a time. Childrens Hospital Los Angeles has limited patients to two visitors at a time. Within the next week, UCLA Medical Center will bar children under 16 from pediatric, perinatal, neonatal and child life areas unless preauthorized by hospital staff, spokesman Enrique Rivero said.

Source/Full Story: Los Angeles Times
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Another eight pig herds in Nord-Trøndelag in Norway have been diagnosed with the swine flu, and Minister of Agriculture Lars Peder Brekk has asked that pig farmers be given priority when the mass vaccination program against the flu begins.

Experts said the flu spreads from humans to pigs more easily than earlier believed. The Minister is therefore concerned about the possibility that farmers will infect their own animals, and that the disease will gain a foothold in Norway, which has up to now been free of the disease among animals.

Herds destroyed
A pig herd of 500 animals were mass slaughtered on Tuesday, after swine flu was confirmed on a farm in the county of Nord-Trøndelag last week. Another 900 pigs from a second farm will also be slaughtered.

This is the first time that swine flu has been diagnosed on pigs in Norway, and the mass slaughtering is a measure to prevent the disease from spreading. The slaughtered animals will be incinerated.

Source/Full Story: Pig Progress

Just remember, “Social Distancing”, i.e physical separation from the public will be the most essential tool for avoiding infection, not a vaccine.

Swine flu is causing unprecedented illness for so early in the fall — including a worrisome count of child deaths — and the government warned Friday that vaccine supplies will be even more scarce than expected through this month.

Federal health officials said 11 more children have died in the past week because of the virus.

Manufacturer delays mean 28 million to 30 million doses, at most, will be divided around the country by the end of the month, not the 40 million-plus that states had been expecting. The new count from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention means anxiously awaited flu-shot clinics in some parts of the country may have to be postponed.

It also delays efforts to blunt increasing infections. Overall, what CDC calls the 2009 H1N1 flu is causing widespread disease in 41 states, and about 6 percent of all doctor visits are for flu-like illness — levels not normally seen until much later in the fall.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says about half of the child deaths since September have been among teenagers.

And overall for the country, deaths from pneumonia and flu-like illnesses have passed what CDC considers an epidemic level. About 6 percent of all doctor visits are for flu-like illnesses, levels not normally seen until later in the fall.

The CDC’s Dr. Anne Schuchat (SHU’-kit) says, “These are very sobering statistics.”

This new strain is different from regular winter flu because it strikes the young far more than the old, and child deaths are drawing particular attention. Eighty-six children have died of swine flu in the U.S. since it burst on the scene last spring — 43 of those deaths reported in September and early October alone, said CDC’s Dr. Anne Schuchat.

That’s a startling number because in some past winters, the CDC has counted 40 or 50 child deaths for the entire flu season, she said, and no one knows how long this swine flu outbreak will last. Half of those early fall child deaths are among teenagers, also surprising as preschoolers are thought to be most vulnerable.

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

A national campaign to inoculate tens of millions of Americans against H1N1 influenza began Monday, with health care workers in Indiana and Tennessee targeted as the first recipients, federal health authorities said.

“I think the world has watched history unfold,” Dr. Judy Monroe, Indiana’s state health commissioner, told reporters at Wishard Hospital in Indianapolis.

Earlier Monday, the hospital received a shipment of 52 boxes — each containing 100 pre-filled sprayers.

“This first 5,200 doses that came to Marion County is really just the tip of the iceberg,” Monroe said.

Health Director Virginia Caine said the shipment will be split among the county’s hospitals.

A similar scene unfolded at LeBonheur Children’s Medical Center in Memphis, Tennessee, where three children have died from H1N1, sometimes referred to as swine flu.

Jennilyn Utkov, a spokeswoman for LeBonheur, said the hospital received about 100 doses. By noon, the supply had been depleted.

The vaccines shipped to both sites and to a few other places around the nation are the first of some 195 million doses the U.S. government has purchased from five vaccine manufacturers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Dr. Jay Butler told reporters at the Indianapolis event. That number includes both spray and injectable forms.

Butler, who heads the agency’s 2009 H1N1 Vaccine Task Force, has promised there will be enough for anyone who wants it.
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From August 30 until September 26, the agency tallied 16,174 hospitalizations nationwide and 1,379 deaths associated with influenza virus infection.

The 27 states reporting widespread flu activity are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming.

Source/Full Story:: CNN.com
Technorati Tags: H1N1, vaccine

A top U.S. military commander says troops will begin getting required swine flu shots in the next week to 10 days. Active duty forces deploying to war zones and other critical areas are at the front of the vaccine line.

Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart also told The Associated Press that as many as 400 troops are ready to go to five regional headquarters around the country to assist federal health and emergency management officials if needed as the flu season heats up.

The Pentagon has bought 2.7 million vaccines, and 1.4 million of those will go to active duty military. National Guard troops on active duty are also required to receive the vaccine, as are civilian Defense Department employees who are in critical jobs.

Source/Full Story: The Associated Press
Technorati Tags: swine flu