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.
In a contest that pits human against virus, the U.S. government is evaluating the safety and effectiveness of swine flu vaccine in hopes of having millions of doses ready for use before the next wave of the pandemic H1N1 sweeps across the nation.
This week the virus struck first, infecting a handful of students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; an additional 25 to 30 are awaiting results of a swine flu test.
Across the United States, thousands of other students have reported influenza symptoms, though many have not been tested for swine flu, according to college officials and a survey by the American College Health Association.
"Well, I think it's going to be a race," said Douglas Reding, vice president of the Marshfield Clinic. "It could potentially be neck and neck depending on when the next outbreak occurs."
At the Milwaukee Health Department, Medical Director Geoffrey Swain said: "I've got my fingers crossed. I'm hopeful that the swine flu outbreak will not have picked up a lot of steam before we get a lot of vaccine."
The race comes at a time when the federal government is in the midst of a multibillion-dollar effort to boost America's flu vaccine capacity and just as vaccine makers are moving into new technologies. Read the rest of the story.
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.
