Older Americans Have Some Immunity to Swine Flu, but It’s Not Absolute

When they do contract a severe case of flu, they face greater risk

By: Katharine Greider | Source: AARP Bulletin Today | November 11, 2009

One of the most surprising characteristics of the pandemic H1N1 flu virus galloping across the country this fall is the way it tends to spare older people, striking hardest among the young. More than half of U.S. patients hospitalized with the so-called swine flu have been under the age of 25. Small studies have found that people over age 60 have some antibodies to the bug.

But, whatever immunity to H1N1 older people may enjoy, it’s definitely not foolproof. A recent report on H1N1 cases in California injects a note of caution about the risk profile of people age 50-plus. While they were less likely to get a severe case of H1N1 flu, those who did were more likely than younger people to lose that battle and die.

Published Nov. 4 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study examined the first 1,088 H1N1 cases in California that required hospitalization or resulted in death, the bulk of them occurring between last spring and early summer. The median age of these sick patients was only 27, with about a third under 18. While those 50 and older were underrepresented in the group, their fatality rate was 18 to 20 percent, compared with only 11 percent overall.

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FDA Fights Online Flu Cure Scams

Fierce Government IT
November 8, 2009 — 6:14pm ET

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.

N.C. Pork Producers Seeing Flu's Impact On Business

Posted: Nov. 4 11:09 p.m.
Updated: Nov. 4 11:50 p.m.

WRAL.com

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

Swine Flu Vaccine Behind Schedule

Posted 08:32 PM ET

By:  Investors.com

 

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.

Spreading Swine Flu

By Rob Stein |

The Washington Post 

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.

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Swine Flu Vaccination Effort Starts Monday: CDC

Sun Oct 4, 2009 11:03pm EDT
REUTERS.com

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 H1N1 swine 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

Pregnant? Flu Shot May Come With Some Hassle

LAURAN NEERGAARD Associated Press

Sept. 28, 2009, 10:13PM

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.