The Food and Drug Administration is fighting the swine flu on two fronts--the legitimate one and the one that has cropped up that promises healing gels and powders can protect you against this panacea. It has identified 140 different products sold online that claim to prevent or treat the H1N1 virus, and has sent cease-and-desist letters to more than 75 of them, warning them to stop making fraudulent claims.
The agency has gone after sellers of gloves, inhalers, masks, shampoos, herbal extracts, air fresheners and an "ionic silver" that claims to kill every known germ, bacteria or virus within six minutes.
"In public health emergencies, there are individuals, businesses and websites that are taking advantage of public fears," Alyson Saben, deputy director of the agency's office of enforcement, told the New York Times. She added that about 80 percent of the companies that received warning letters from the FDA complied with demands to stop misleading marketing.
If they do not, the agency can start a criminal case, seize products and make third parties--Internet service providers, for example--aware that the companies are violating federal law.
Sims, N.C. — As more pigs test positive for the H1N1 virus, North Carolina's pork industry continues to take an economic hit.
A commercial hog herd in Indiana tested positive this week for the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday. Several show pigs at the Minnesota State Fair contracted the virus last month.
The name “swine flu” and misconceptions about the virus have caused a hardship for the nation's $15 billion pork industry.
“We simply were the victims of a bad name,” said Neil Strother, owner of Strother Swine Farms in Wilson County.
Strother said the H1N1 virus has scared many people away from pork products. People somehow became confused into thinking they could catch the virus from pork.
"Absolutely, complete misinformation was out there,” Strother said.
Agricultural officials have stressed that the virus is not food-borne and that people should not fear consuming pork products.
"There has never been a case of this new pandemic, H1N1, ever being transmitted from animals to humans,” said Dr. Tom Ray, a veterinarian and North Carolina director of livestock health. The Rest Of The Story
The fed'l gov't originally promised 120 mil doses of swine flu vaccine by now, but only 13 mil have come through. Production is running several weeks behind schedule, and health officials blame the pressure on drug makers to crank it out along with the ordinary flu vaccine, and a slow and antiquated process. Clinics that managed to obtain doses of the vaccine have been swamped, and doctors are getting bombarded with calls from worried parents.
People may be able to spread swine flu even after their symptoms have subsided, according to new research.
A study of Air Force cadets who came down with the flu this summer found that a significant proportion of them were still "shedding" virus more than 24 hours after their fever and other symptoms had disappeared.
Public health authorities have been asking people to stay home from work and school for at least a day after their temperatures return to normal, in an effort to limit the spread of the virus. But the new findings, reported in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, raise questions about that advice.
The new study involved some of the 1,300 basic cadet trainees who arrived at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., on June 25 for a six-week military training program. By July 6, some of the cadets began to experience flu-like symptoms, and two tested positive for the illness. The virus apparently spread during a social mixer; cases peaked 48 hours after the event and dropped off quickly afterwards.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Healthcare workers in Indiana and Tennessee will be among the first to get swine flu vaccines in the United States on Monday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Vaccination clinics are scheduled for Monday morning for staff at Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center in Memphis, Tennessee and Wishard Health Services in Indianapolis, the CDC said.
Last week, the center said the first doses of H1N1swine flu vaccine would arrive on Tuesday. The first vaccines to administered will be AstraZeneca unit MedImmune's nasal spray.
The U.S. government has ordered about 250 million doses from five companies -- Sanofi-Aventis SA, CSL Ltd MedImmune, Novartis AG and GlaxoSmithKline. MedImmune had especially good production of the H1N1 vaccine and has been the first to make doses available.
The vaccines will trickle in at a rate of about 20 million doses a week, and officials are unsure how many Americans will actually get them. The U.S. government is providing them for free, but clinics and retailers may charge to administer them.
The picture is further complicated by seasonal flu vaccination, which started last month.
Pandemic H1N1 has been circulating since it was first identified in two U.S. children last March but it has picked up speed since schools returned from their summer break in August.
The CDC said it is not especially deadly, but it is affecting younger people than seasonal flu usually does and at a time of year when there is generally little or no influenza.
Dozens of children and at least 28 pregnant women in the United States have died from the virus and at least 100 pregnant women were sick enough with it to be hospitalized, the CDC said.
Pregnant women, healthcare workers and people with special health conditions including heart disease and diabetes are supposed to be the first to get the vaccine
WASHINGTON — It's hard for pregnant women to escape the message: You're at extra risk from swine flu — it could trigger premature labor, hospitalize you for weeks, even kill you — so be among the first in line for the vaccine next month. But only about one in seven pregnant women gets a flu shot each winter.
While health officials are working hard to raise that number, repeated swine flu warnings won't overcome a key obstacle: Many obstetricians don't vaccinate. And not only are women reluctant to hunt for flu shots elsewhere, historically some pharmacists and others have been wary of vaccinating them.
“Maybe this year we can change that culture,” says Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “It's not supposed to happen that you, when you are pregnant, are fighting for your life on a respirator.”
Pregnant women make up 6 percent of H1N1-confirmed deaths even though they account for only 1 percent of the population, according to the CDC. They're at least four times as likely to be hospitalized as other flu sufferers.
Vaccine is a two-for-one deal during pregnancy: It can protect not just mom but the baby, too, for the first few months after birth. That's important because flu can easily kill newborns, yet babies can't be vaccinated until they're 6 months old.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has no count of how many OBs offer flu vaccine, though it's still considered a minority. An extra complication: Each state's health department will decide who offers the H1N1 vaccine, aiming for locations that vaccinate the most people. Those decisions haven't been made public yet. Even if your OB requested shots, he or she may not get any, at least from initial shipments. So the CDC and ACOG are urging OBs to partner with a hospital or drugstore to guarantee their patients a shot, a message the government will reiterate Tuesday in a swine flu seminar for OBs nationwide.
Yet providers who don't routinely treat pregnant women may not understand flu's risk and the shot's safety record, says Dr. Neil Silverman of the University of California, Los Angeles. Take pharmacists, expected to be key vaccinators. Silverman gets phone calls from women who say a pharmacist won't fill a flu-shot prescription. For every patient who calls, “I know there are at least two who just say, ‘Well, OK, I'm not going to do this,' and just walk away.”
The American Pharmacists Association is urging its members to follow the CDC's pregnancy guidelines, but a few stores may still balk, says association chief of staff Mitchel Rothholz.
20 September 2009 | by Simone Roberts: Pharmacy News
Pharmacists are on a list of priority patients to be given immunity to swine flu following the approval of a vaccine by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
The medicines regulator approved the registration of CSL's Panvax H1N1 influenza vaccine for use in adults and children 10 years of age and over on Friday.
"The human adult trials have indicated that the pandemic vaccine is similar to that of seasonal influenza vaccine with a high safety and low adverse events profile, and that only one injection is required for adults," a release from the Department of Health and Ageing said.
The TGA has not approved the vaccine for use in children less than 10 years of age, and is awaiting further data from CSL on the results of a paediatric clinical trial currently in progress.
Following the announcement a national vaccination program will begin next week with frontline health workers, pregnant women, indigenous people, those with chronic health and other vulnerable groups the focus of the initial roll-out. The wider population will also be able to access the vaccine.
Health minister Nicola Roxon urged all adults to receive the shot.
"As a vaccine remains our best defence against the pandemic flu, the TGA's decision to approve the vaccine is most welcome," she said.
"As there is enough vaccine for all adults, I encourage people to protect themselves and their families against the pandemic flu by getting vaccinated."
The Rudd Government has purchased 21 million doses of the vaccine. State health authorities will begin delivery to immunisation providers including hospitals and GPs next week.
In Australia the pandemic flu has been associated with thousands of hospitalisations and 172 deaths. Worldwide there have been more than 3,500 deaths associated with this flu strain.
SAN FRANCISCO — When the coughing stops is probably a better sign of when a swine flu patient is no longer contagious, experts said after seeing new research that suggests the virus can still spread many days after a fever goes away.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been telling people to stay home from work and school and avoid contact with others until a day after their fever breaks. The new research suggests they may need to be careful for longer — especially at home where the risk of spreading the germ is highest.
Swine flu also appears to be contagious longer than ordinary seasonal flu, several experts said.
"This study shows you're not contagious for a day or two. You're probably contagious for about a week," said Gaston De Serres, a scientist at the Institute of Public Health in Quebec.
He presented one of the studies Monday at an American Society for Microbiology conference. It is the first big meeting of infectious disease experts since last spring's emergence of swine flu, which now accounts for nearly all of the flu cases in the United States. More than 1 million Americans have been infected and nearly 600 have died from it, the CDC estimates.
It is unclear whether the new research will lead the CDC to rethink its advice on how long people with swine flu should hole up. Long breaks from school and work do not seem worth it for a virus that now seems to cause mostly mild illness, said the CDC's flu chief, Nancy Cox. Swine flu is spreading so widely now that confining the sick does less good, she said.
"We tried to have our guidance balance out all of these factors," she said. "It's just virtually impossible not to have virus introduced into settings such as schools and universities."
Doctors know that people can spread ordinary seasonal flu for a couple of days before and after symptoms start by studying virus that patients shed in mucus. The first such studies of swine flu are just coming out now, and they imply a longer contagious period for the novel bug.
Posted by Michelle Mitzvie | September 12th, 2009 at 9:30 am Ethiopian Review
The U.S. National Institutes of Health says clinical trials show that the new H1N1 swine influenza vaccine could protect against the virus with just one dose instead of two as had previously been expected. This means vaccine supplies could be available for twice as many people. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says trials show that adults who got a single dose of the swine flu vaccine were protected from the virus within eight to 10 days. Fauci is expected to officially release the U.S. vaccine trial results at a news conference Friday. On Thursday, the New England Journal of Medicine published two studies that also confirmed a single vaccination could protect against the virus. Australian vaccine maker CSL Limited and Swiss Drug company Novartis conducted the studies. Also Friday, the World Health Organization released new advice for schools to reduce the spread of swine flu. The WHO said schools deciding to close because of an H1N1 outbreak should do so at an early stage to slow transmission of the virus. The WHO has declared the swine flu outbreak a pandemic, and says up to two billion people may eventually be infected. It says more than 3,000 deaths related to the virus have been reported worldwide. - VOA News
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Medical officials at Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center have erected a tent to handle a growing influx of patients stricken with swine flu.
The 2,400-square-foot tent set up Friday night will allow nurses will conduct health screenings on flu patients to determine if they're in need of hospital care.
Dr. William May, chief medical officer at the hospital, told The Commercial Appeal that many people are coming into the emergency room without emergency conditions.
The hospital's emergency room, which will be replaced by one twice as big under new renovations, normally receives about 160-180 children a day. But on some days, the patient load has exceeded 350 — at least half of them being children with flu-like symptoms.
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Information from: The Commercial Appeal, http://www.commercialappeal.com
Federal health officials put out new guidelines Tuesday that say the flu medicines Tamiflu and Relenza should only be used to treat people who are sick with the flu and at high risk for complications.
The new advice tries to close a door that government doctors had left open in May. Back then, they didn’t rule out sometimes using the drugs to stop swine flu’s spread and prevent illness even in children who had no symptoms.
Now that swine flu is so common, health officials say the medicines should be reserved for people at higher risk of complications.
Already, there are reports coming from schools across Florida that kids are being diagnosed with swine flu (also known as the H1N1 virus ). And in Georgia, Alaska and Puerto Rico, health officials say swine flu already is widespread.
The good news is this: Although swine flu is highly contagious, the World Health Organization says it generally causes "very mild illness" in healthy people.
But there are ways to prevent the flu from spreading, mainly by washing your hands.
If doctors sound like your mom, who keeps bugging you to wash your hands before you eat, there's a reason.
"Whenever you're contaminated by touching things that other people have touched — desks or tabletops in the lunchroom — you really should wash your hands before eating or drinking or touching your face," said Dr. Philip Tierno, director of clinical microbiology and immunology at New Yorks University's Langone Medical Center. Eighty percent of all infections are spread when you touch germs and then touch your mouth, eyes and nose. Read More
BEIJING — The answer may be at hand to a crucial question about vaccination for the advancing swine flu — one shot or two? Chinese officials approved a vaccine Thursday that they say prevents the new flu in a single dose.
If they're right, it would be good news. Many health researchers fear it will take two shots to protect people, vastly complicating efforts to stem the spread of the illness.
The World Health Organization says it is encouraged after reviewing the test details from the vaccine by Beijing-based drug maker Sinovac Biotech Ltd. — one of several being developed in China. However, experts said more results are needed from other vaccine makers to determine if one dose would be potent enough.
Australia-based CSL should know within days whether one dose of its vaccine, administered to volunteers in that country in late July, was enough. CSL to date has been mum.
In about two weeks, the US expects to announce initial test results from its vaccine, which is the same type as one of the Chinese versions, said Dr. Anthony Fauci of the US National Institutes of Health.
"From what I've seen and heard of the data, it looks encouraging," Fauci said of the clinical trials of Sinovac vaccine. "This is very good news. Let's hope the material that we're using has similar results."Most experts agreed." Read The Rest Of The Story
The Washington Post By: Michael A. Fletcher Wednesday, September 2, 2009
President Obama called on Americans on Tuesday to take common-sense steps to help contain the expected impact of swine flu, including staying home from work when they are sick, frequently washing their hands, and covering their sneezes with a sleeve instead of a hand.
Obama told reporters in the Rose Garden that the federal government is taking a coordinated approach to fighting the expected outbreak, including ramping up what he says will be a "voluntary but strongly recommended" H1N1 flu vaccination program.
The president has received regular briefings on the flu pandemic, including one Tuesday from several Cabinet members and other top officials. He has asked officials to "spare no effort in addressing this national security challenge," according to the White House. Read The Rest Of The Story:
WASHINGTON - When is swine flu just miserable and when do you need a doctor?
If it's hard to breathe, that's an emergency. It's the not-so-obvious cases that can have parents, or the sick of any age, fretting.
"There tends to be a lot of hysteria," said Dr. Nathan Litman of the Children's Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. "We should try to emphasize the prevention mode, and the rational approach to dealing with the illness rather than when the child has a runny nose running to the emergency room."
Symptoms of any flu include fever of 100 degrees or more, cough, body chills and aches, congestion. Diarrhea and vomiting sometimes occur, particularly with the swine flu that doctors call the 2009 H1N1 flu.
Regardless of the strain, most people who otherwise are healthy need to stay home and rest, and get plenty of fluids, health officials agree.
But there's a catch. Not everyone with swine flu gets a fever, making it hard to know if they've got that or a common cold.
That doesn't happen too often, although there are no good statistics and no one knows if those people even are as contagious as the fevered, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
But generally, people without a fever don't get as sick.
Children and the elderly are at "high risk" of serious complications from swine flu. But pregnant women are among the most vulnerable.
"We don't know the full epidemiology of swine flu because it's so new, but the small literature we do have seems to point to pregnant women as disproportionately affected by the virus," says Dr. Cynthia Gyamfi, assistant clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University Medical Center.
The first swine-flu fatality in the U.S., on May 5, was a pregnant woman, Judy Trunnell, 33, of Texas.
"As the uterus grows during pregnancy, it compresses the diaphragm and the area where the lungs are, and there is less air movement in lungs, so any type of infection can fester longer when you're pregnant," says Gyamfi, who specializes in high-risk obstetrics.
With the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology predicting the resurgence of swine flu could kill as many as 90,000 Americans, mommies-to-be need to be extra-vigilant about the coming flu season, according to New York's top baby docs:
1. "Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands," says Dr. Amos Grunebaum, director of obstetrics at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. "We're all on top of each other in New York - that's how our patients got pregnant in the first place. We're on the subway, the bus, everything is crowded, and that increases your risk of becoming infected." Grunebaum recommends taking in the fresh air in Central Park and some loops around the reservoir in lieu of unnecessary trips undergound.
2. If you have a fever or think you have any symptoms, call your doctor and get treated immediately with antivirals like Tamiflu and the flu vaccine. "Mothers should keep in mind that there will be two vaccines for the next flu season - one for swine flu specifically, and one for the strain of flu that we think will be the most common. They should get both vaccines," says Gyamfi. And time is of the essence. "If mothers develop any flu-like symptoms - cough, sore throat, runny nose or fever - they should get treated with Tamiflu immediately, because it's most effective when started within 24 to 48 hours after symptoms begin," adds Grunebaum.
3. Avoid sick people. If a pregnant women is even exposed to someone who has H1N1, Grunebaum recommends taking a prophylactic dose of Tamiflu without waiting for culture results. If you are sick, Gyamfi advises determining your temperature before you take Tylenol to treat it, so you can get a sense of how sick you are and tell your doctor.
Thursday 20th August 2009 By: Nursing In Practice 15 Minutes Ago
The latest swine flu patient figures are expected to show a slowing of new cases of the disease.
Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson's last update revealed there were 25,000 new cases, compared with 30,000 and 110,000 in the previous two weeks.
The number of new cases of swine flu should continue to decline while schools and universities are closed, according to experts, but numbers may rise sharply again when term time begins.
The eventual number of deaths is estimated to be between 55,000 and 750,000.
A total of 44 people in England have been confirmed as dying after contracting swine flu, while another five have died in Scotland.
Sir Liam revealed that people in priority groups would begin receiving vaccinations in October.
However, doctors have reportedly been alerted over fears that Tamiflu could put increase some patients' risk of suffering a stroke.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has raised concerns that the drug may interact with warfarin, which is taken to thin the blood.
Wall Street Journal: August 13, 2009, 8:28 P.M. ET
WASHINGTON -- Hogs aren't spreading swine flu but they can catch it from people, requiring farmers to take extra care this fall and winter to prevent humans from sneezing on their livestock.
Because no vaccine has been developed yet to protect hog herds, the emphasis by producers will be on getting vaccinations for farm workers, veterinarians and others who come into contact with the animals.
It is "not so much to protect the workers, but to protect the pigs from the workers," said Jennifer Greiner, director for science and technology at the National Pork Producers Council.
Farmers would prefer, however, to vaccinate the pigs rather than the humans around them, Ms. Greiner said, but that isn't yet possible despite the efforts of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agriculture Research Service.
The agency's scientists haven't been able to develop a viable pig vaccine for the new swine flu, known as A/H1N1, according to an agency memo obtained by Dow Jones Newswires, although they are still "evaluating an experimental vaccine."
The government also has shared samples of the swine-flu virus with private drug companies in the hopes that they will produce a vaccine. Neither Ms. Greiner nor USDA officials believe success will come in time for this year's flu season.
Development of the vaccine isn't expected until well into winter, USDA spokesman Ed Curlett said.
That is bad news say industry and government officials because the hype surrounding this virus has hurt the pork business since April, and it could do further damage this fall when the flu season starts.
If pigs start getting sick, pork sales could take a hit even though there is no danger of meat contamination, USDA chief veterinarian John Clifford said.
The A/H1N1 virus was dubbed swine flu because it is an H1N1 type that traditionally has been found in pigs, but this particular strain contains swine, avian and human viral genes.
Pigs have contracted the virus, but for the most part it has been spread human to human. The first confirmed cases of the swine flu in pigs were found in Canada in early May and they got sick from exposure to an infected farm worker.
U.S. health and agriculture officials have repeatedly tried to assure consumers here and abroad that this "novel" H1N1 virus can't be transmitted in pork, but Mr. Clifford said there is still a danger to swine producers from baseless fear.
USDA scientists tried to detect the virus in pork produced from an infected pig, but couldn't find it, according to the Agriculture Research Service memo.
"The virus has only been isolated from the respiratory tract and not from other tissues," according to the document. "The virus was not isolated in meat and therefore the novel H1N1 is not a food safety issue."
Despite the science, meat packers may still refuse to buy pork from a swine operation at which the H1N1 virus has been detected, Mr. Clifford said. That concern has the USDA reaching out to processors and producers.
The USDA needs processors to keep buying swine in order to keep business flowing, but the agency also needs farmers to overcome the fear of stigma and report illnesses in their herds if they find them.
The flu isn't a "reportable" livestock illness, meaning farmers aren't compelled to tell the government if they find it, as opposed to a disease like foot-and-mouth.
If they report finding flu symptoms, veterinarians will be able to quickly tell if it is the new flu that has killed more than a thousand people world-wide, thanks to the work of USDA researchers.
The USDA's Mr. Clifford said the swine-flu virus is virulent, but not potent enough to kill the pigs nor mobile enough to jump easily from one herd to the next. He said close surveillance is necessary "because of the possibility that the virus could change into something more dangerous to swine."
By MIKE STOBBE - Ap Medical Writer
Associated Press– Fri Jul 24, 5:48 pm ET
ATLANTA – In a disturbing new projection, health officials say up to 40 percent of Americans could get swine flu this year and next and several hundred thousand could die without a successful vaccine campaign and other measures.
The estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are roughly twice the number of those who catch flu in a normal season and add greater weight to hurried efforts to get a new vaccine ready for the fall flu season. Swine flu has already hit the United States harder than any other nation, but it has struck something of a glancing blow that's more surprising than devastating. The virus has killed about 300 Americans and experts believe it has sickened more than 1 million, comparable to a seasonal flu with the weird ability to keep spreading in the summer.
Health officials say flu cases may explode in the fall, when schools open and become germ factories, and the new estimates dramatize the need to have vaccines and other measures in place.
A world health official said the first vaccines are expected in September and October. The United States expects to begin testing on some volunteers in August, with 160 million doses ready in October.
The CDC came up with the new projections for the virus' spread last month, but it was first disclosed in an interview this week with The Associated Press.
The estimates are based on a flu pandemic from 1957, which killed nearly 70,000 in the United States but was not as severe as the infamous Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19. The number of deaths and illnesses from the new swine flu virus would drop if the pandemic peters out or if efforts to slow its spread are successful, said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner.
"Hopefully, mitigation efforts will have a big impact on future cases," he said. Besides pushing flu shots , health officials might urge measures such as avoiding crowded places, handwashing, cough covering and timely use of medicines like Tamiflu.
Because so many more people are expected to catch the new flu, the number of deaths over two years could range from 90,000 to several hundred thousand, the CDC calculated. Again, that is if a new vaccine and other efforts fail.
In a normal flu season, about 36,000 people die from flu and its complications, according to the American Medical Association. That too is an estimate, because death certificates don't typically list flu as a cause of death. Instead, they attribute a fatality to pneumonia or other complications. Influenza is notoriously hard to predict, and some experts have shied away from a forecast. At a CDC swine flu briefing Friday, one official declined to answer repeated questions about her agency's own estimate.
"I don't think that influenza and its behavior in the population lends itself very well to these kinds of models," said the official, Dr. Anne Schuchat, who oversees the CDC's flu vaccination programs.
The World Health Organization says as many as 2 billion people could become infected in the next two years — nearly a third of the world population. The estimates look at potential impacts in a two-year period because past flu pandemics have occurred in waves over more than one year.
Swine flu has been an escalating concern in Britain and some other European nations, where the virus' late arrival has grabbed attention and some officials at times have sounded alarmed.
In an interview Friday, the WHO's flu chief told the AP the global epidemic is still in its early stages.
"Even if we have hundreds of thousands of cases or a few millions of cases ... we're relatively early in the pandemic," Keiji Fukuda said at WHO headquarters in Geneva.
The first vaccines are expected in September and October, Fukuda said. Other vaccines won't be ready until well into the flu season when a further dramatic rise in swine flu cases is expected.
First identified in April, swine flu has likely infected more than 1 million Americans, the CDC believes, with many of those suffering mild cases never reported. There have been 302 deaths and nearly 44,000 laboratory-identified cases, according to numbers released Friday morning.
Because the swine flu virus is new, most people haven't developed an immunity to it. So far, most of those who have died from it in the United States have had other health problems, such as asthma.
The virus has caused an unusual number of serious illnesses in teens and young adults; seasonal flu usually is toughest on the elderly and very young children.
Swine flu is spreading faster than ever — so much so that the World Health Organization has decided to stop tracking cases.
In the U.S., the H1N1 virus has sickened tens of thousands and closed summer camps at a time when there should be little or no flu activity.
Even as the WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continue to raise awareness of this potentially deadly disease, which appears to be killing both sick and healthy individuals, the topic has virtually disappeared from the headlines.
“Complacency is a major concern,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director for National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC.
“This virus is a new one, and on top of that, we really still don’t know how it’s going to behave,” Schuchat said during a media conference call Friday. “There are special efforts that have been undertaken by health agencies, but individuals also need to be ready, to be thinking ahead and have steps in place should a family member get sick or a workplace close down or a situation arise that requires working from home.”
Over the next six to 12 weeks, there are several concerns that national health officials are preparing for:
1. Figuring out how the virus will react and spread once students return to schools, especially inner city schools, which typically struggle with overcrowding issues.
2. Overseeing the completion of a vaccine and getting it to the individuals who need it most.
3. Determining how the virus will behave as it spreads and mutates.
*Schools
School districts across the U.S. struggle every fall with outbreaks of typically non-flu respiratory viruses, which are easily spread through germs on surfaces and doorknobs, as well as passed from student to student through sneezing, coughing, and sharing drinks and food.
Seasonal influenza usually begins to spread through schools in the late fall and early winter, but this probably will not be the case with swine flu, which behaves differently than seasonal influenza – by oddly thriving in warm and humid conditions.
“This year we’re seeing the H1N1 virus circulating through summer camps and military units, so I’m expecting we may see an increase in cases once school starts, but we don’t definitely know that,” Schuchat said. “We are concerned that there will be challenges in the fall. It is the kind of thing we want to be ready for and not surprised by.”
Schuchat said national and state health officials are working closely together on updating their guidance for schools and similar institutions with regard to swine flu outbreaks.
“We still believe that the best place for kids is in schools, where they can be nourished receiving a healthy breakfast and lunch and learning,” she said. “But we also believe the best place for a sick kid is at home being cared for. So we’re working on putting strong plans in place on communication and preparedness on the local and state levels.” *Vaccine
Companies such as Baxter, GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis are working to ready a swine flu vaccine for October. Earlier this week, concerns were raised that the U.S. may not receive all the vaccine it needs because it only manufactures about 20 percent of its own supply. The other 80 percent is produced in foreign countries, which will also need ample supplies of the vaccine.
But Schuchat downplayed those concerns, saying the U.S. has contracts in place with manufacturers around the world that guarantee it will receive adequate vaccine.
But, will the vaccine be effective?
In a typical year, the seasonal flu vaccine is about 70 to 90 percent effective, depending on how closely the vaccine matches the strains circulating and on the population the vaccine is used in. In other words, a vaccine is not going to be as effective in a person with a compromised immune system or someone who is considered at high risk for the virus.
Scientists typically spend months researching the strains of seasonal flu virus that are circulating the globe in order to pick out the three strains that it puts into the annual vaccine.
Because swine flu is new and mutating – for example, in Argentina the virus appears to have mutated to where it can now easily spread from humans to pigs – scientists have their work cut out for them when it comes to determining what strains of the H1N1 swine flu virus to include in the vaccine.
“Unfortunately, right now, we do not know how effective it will be in different populations,” Schuchat said. “We will be looking back at how well it worked, taking into account whether it worked as well as expected, better than expected or worse than expected. Unfortunately, that’s something we’re not able to do until after the fact.” *Virus Behavior
World and U.S. health officials have already determined that swine flu behaves differently than seasonal flu in a number of ways. First, it’s able to spread in hot and humid weather, which is not usually the case for the seasonal flu virus.
Second, the infection appears to be more severe in young people and less severe in the elderly than the typical seasonal flu. Schuchat said in some countries, elderly people, usually at high-risk for influenza, appear to be immune to swine flu – possibly because of the similarities between swine flu and the 1918 flu pandemic, which some of the world’s elderly survived and may be resistant to.
“We are particularly concerned about pregnant women; we’re seeing fatalities and life-threatening illnesses that have occurred in pregnant women in the Southern Hemisphere,” Schuchat said. “We are expecting pregnant women to get a recommendation to get the H1N1 vaccine to reduce the risk of complications from influenza. We know many pregnant women don’t like to take any drugs, but this is one instance where you need to be much more concerned about your health than the baby’s health.”
“We’re in a very active stage of preparing for the [coming months],” she continued. “We’re working with the private sector. We want individuals and families to be preparing. Influenza in general is unpredictable, and we don’t know what to expect in the weeks and months ahead.”
