(Bloomberg) — Swine flu [H1N1 virus] may infect half the U.S. population this year, hospitalize 1.8 million patients and lead to as many as 90,000 deaths, more than twice the number killed in a typical seasonal flu, White House advisers said. In a report by the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, President [...]
(Reuters) – Scientific advisers to President Barack Obama may have asked the government to speed up the availability of [H1N1 virus] swine flu vaccines, but they are unlikely to be ready before October, the new head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday. Full article here.
Governments must prepare for a swift response to the global spread of swine flu as it is expected to speed up in the next few months, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The World Health Organization’s Western Pacific director Dr. Shin Young-soo warned countries to be prepared for an “explosion” of H1N1 Virus / Swine [...]
(The Washington Post) One of the main battlegrounds in the fight against an expected resurgence of swine flu this fall will be the schoolyard, a place where the disease could, well, go viral. People between 6 months and 24 years old appear to be particularly vulnerable to the swine flu virus, known as H1N1. And [...]
(NYTimes.com) There have been no serious side effects from the first set of injections of the new [H1N1] swine flu vaccine, federal health officials said Friday in predicting that nearly 200 million doses could be produced by year’s end. Full article here.
(Reuters) – U.S. officials on Monday said they had slashed their estimate of how many swine flu vaccine doses will be available for the start of a mass vaccination campaign in the fall. Citing delays in manufacturing and packaging the vaccines, the Department of Health and Human Services said only 45 million doses of the [...]
(USA TODAY) A Chinese company has become the first drugmaker worldwide to complete clinical trials for an H1N1 swine flu vaccine, and the developer reports that one shot has proved “safe and effective.” Health officials had predicted that two shots per person would be needed, raising concerns about possible shortages of the vaccine. Full article [...]
LONDON (Reuters) – GlaxoSmithKline has started testing its pandemic H1N1 swine flu vaccine in humans, and expects to start giving the results to government agencies next month, the drugmaker said on Friday. Full article here.
[BBC Report] Work in the British Medical Journal shows Tamiflu and Relenza rarely prevent complications in children with seasonal flu, yet carry side effects. Although they did not test this in the current swine flu pandemic, the authors say these drugs are unlikely to help children who catch the H1N1 virus. For the full report, [...]
(August 7, 2009) Updated federal guidelines offer state and local public health and school officials a range of options for responding to 2009 H1N1 influenza [Swine flu] in schools, depending on how severe the flu may be in their communities. The guidance says officials should balance the risk of flu in their communities with the [...]
(AP REPORT) — Hundreds of schools are heeding the government’s call to set up [H1N1 "swine flu"] flu-shot clinics this fall, preparing for what could be the most widespread school vaccinations since the days of polio. An Associated Press review of [H1N1] swine flu planning suggests there are nearly 3 million students in districts where [...]
July 31 (UPI) — Maryland-based Medimmune pharmaceuticals expects to produce nearly five times the amount of H1N1 vaccine originally anticipated…. [The company] expects to make 200 million doses by March [2010]. Medimmune is of the five companies under contract to the U.S. government to produce H1N1 flu vaccine. Medimmune also makes the nasal spray [...]
“The symptoms of H1N1 (swine) flu in people are similar to the symptoms of regular human flu and include fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. Some people have reported diarrhea and vomiting associated with H1N1 (swine) flu. In the past, severe illness (pneumonia and respiratory failure) and deaths have been reported [...]
