News Reports for April 28, 2012

US: Secret Briefing Helped Sway H5N1 Flu Papers Decision

A classified briefing from U.S. intelligence officials helped persuade a majority of members of a government advisory board that the benefits of publishing two controversial H5N1 avian influenza studies outweighed the risks, according to testimony presented yesterday at a U.S. Senate hearing.

The late March briefing to the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) left "the impression that the risk of misuse did not appreciably increase with full publication and there is a high likelihood of undesirable political consequences to not publishing," microbiologist Paul Keim of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, acting chair of NSABB, told the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Continued: http://news.sciencemag.org/sci...  

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sat Apr 28, 2012 at 05:52:53 AM UTC

CIDRAP: Flu activity winds down across Northern Hemisphere

Apr 27, 2012 - The latest snapshot of the US flu season shows that significant activity is still occurring, though infection levels are declining, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today.

The proportion of respiratory specimens testing positive for flu rose last week, from 17.5% to 22.2%, which shows that flu activity is ongoing (Snip) In the late but mild flu season, activity is likely to continue for weeks to come (Snip) Overall, the share of doctor visits for flu-like illness fell from 1.5% to 1.3%, keeping it well below the national baseline of 2.4%. (Snip) the level for the Pacific Northwest-Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington-was still above the baseline.

Deaths from pneumonia and influenza dropped again, staying below the epidemic threshold. Three more pediatric flu deaths were reported, pushing the season's total to 18. One was associated with the 2009 H1N1 virus, one involved H3N2, and the other featured an undetermined influenza A subtype. Only four states reported that flu was geographically widespread, a decrease from six the previous week. Ten states reported regional spread.

Globally, flu activity has peaked in most temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere (Snip) Overall flu activity has decreased in the United States for 4 weeks in a row and in Canada for 3 consecutive weeks (Snip)

The WHO noted a slight increase in the number of oseltamivir-resistant isolates  in the United States. Last week, the CDC reported six additional resistant H1N1 isolates, which pushed the resistant percentage for H1N1 to 2%. The CDC reported two more resistant H1N1 isolates this week, raising the season's total to 15.

The United States and the United Kingdom had milder flu activity this season than in past years, though other countries in Europe and northern Asia have seen levels similar to previous years, the WHO said. Areas of the world seeing increasing flu activity include Oman (2009 H1N1) and the Dominican Republic (H3N2). Over the past few weeks, high proportions of 2009 H1N1 cases have been detected in India and Bangladesh (Snip)

(Snip) the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said today that the flu season is drawing to a close throughout Europe. Activity was stable or decreasing in all countries except for Northern Ireland. All countries are reporting low influenza intensity, except for Slovakia, which is reporting moderate intensity (Snip) http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidr...

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sat Apr 28, 2012 at 06:02:37 AM UTC

U.S. influenza up after weeks of decline

Influenza activity persists in the United States, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, but is on the decline overall (Snip) Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said the overall incidence of flu-like illness rose for the week ending April 21, after several weeks in decline.

Of the 2,987 specimens tested by U.S. World Health Organization and National Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System, (Snip) found 22.2 percent were positive for influenza, up from 17.5 percent the previous week. For Region 10: Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington the number of respiratory specimens that tested positively for flu was 39 percent.
(Snip)

Widespread influenza activity was reported by four states: Alaska, California, Montana and New York. Regional influenza activity was reported by 10 states: Arizona, Connecticut, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

Sporadic influenza activity was reported by the District of Columbia and Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. (Snip) http://www.upi.com/Health_News...  

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sat Apr 28, 2012 at 06:13:36 AM UTC

Very mild flu season but watch out for next year, experts say

Excerpts:

It has been an "incredibly mild" flu season in Augusta and Georgia, with fewer hospitalizations and no deaths attributed to flu statewide. The same holds true across the nation as the flu season heads toward its end in May. Experts caution that next year could be much different, though.

The influenza viruses circulating in the U.S. have gone virtually unchanged for the past two or three years, which means many people have already been exposed or have been immunized against them, Wilde said.

Although the past two seasons have been mild with fairly stable viruses, it would be "extremely unusual" for that to happen three years in a row, Wilde said. That would likely signal a bad flu season to follow if a virus changes radically, he said.

Full article here: http://chronicle.augusta.com/n...

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sat Apr 28, 2012 at 06:24:19 AM UTC

India: A(H1N1) under control: panel (Tamil Nadu)

A technical committee that reviewed the protocol adopted for treatment of A (H1N1) influenza in the State on Friday, has declared that the infection is under control.

The committee concluded that the infection did not warrant immunisation of the entire community and advised private hospitals to start patients on Tamiflu tablets based on clinical findings, and not wait for the result of the confirmatory tests. The doctors were advised not to administer steroids to patients.

(Snip)

Dr. Vijay said the meeting was called to check if the government was taking the correct measures and to find out what more needed to be done. The committee advised that immunisation be continued for healthcare workers who are exposed to the infection and those in high-risk groups. An official said the State government is also geared to tackle the infection during monsoon and winter. Continued: http://www.thehindu.com/news/c...  

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sat Apr 28, 2012 at 06:32:50 AM UTC

Taking precautions to prevent contagion

With the recent outbreak of viruses such as SARS, bird flu and swine flu, officials and travelers are being extra careful about preventing the illnesses from being transmitted. NBC's Kevin Tibbles reports.

Video: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nig...

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sat Apr 28, 2012 at 06:49:28 AM UTC

CIDRAP: Bacterial co-infection patterns in H1N1 pneumonia patients (Spain)

An analysis from Spain of 128 consecutive patients hospitalized with 2009 H1N1 influenza and community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) showed that a third of them had bacterial co-infection and that the two most common predictors for the complication were chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and increased platelet count.

The study, published yesterday in the Journal of Infection, involved patients hospitalized at two facilities-one in Valencia and one in Barcelona-from May 2009 to February 2010. Patients went through a diagnostic protocol to identify 2009 H1N1 infection and to determine what type of pathogens were involved in cases involving bacterial co-infection. Of 677 patients hospitalized with CAP in the two facilities, 128 (19%) were found to have 2009 H1N1 influenza. Of these, 42 (33%) had bacterial co-infection. The authors noted that this rate is slightly higher than rates with seasonal flu.

When the authors looked at mortality patterns, they found no difference between patients with only 2009 H1N1 pneumonia and those with co-infection. The two most common bacterial pathogens were Streptococcus pneumoniae and, unexpectedly, Pseudomonas aeruginosa. http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidr...

Apr 26 J Infect abstract: http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sat Apr 28, 2012 at 06:56:50 AM UTC

CIDRAP: Canadian flu surveillance system tracked H3N2 mismatch

An enhanced sentinel flu surveillance system in four of Canada's biggest provinces helped health officials sort out a rise in the number of long-term-care facility outbreaks, including higher-than-expected infection rates in vaccinated staff, that occurred during the 2010-11 flu season (Snip)

The country's sentinel surveillance platform includes a negative case-control element and genetic analysis to help estimate annual vaccine effectiveness (VE). During that flu season, the first one after the 2009 H1N1 pandemic period, many Canadians received the split, nonadjuvanted trivalent inactivated flu vaccine.

Ontario reported a threefold increase in the number of institutional outbreaks that season, with Quebec reporting a fivefold increase.

Preliminary analysis found that two variant H3N2 viruses were circulating and that VE was suboptimal. The final analysis of 1,718 participants showed that VE among adults aged 20 to 49 years was 65% (95% confidence interval [CI], 8% to 87%) for 2009 H1N1, 66% (95% CI, 10% to 87%) for influenza B, and 39% (95% CI, 0 to 63%) for H3N2.

Though hemagglutinin inhibition (HI) testing suggested all H3N2 isolates were matched to the vaccine strain, phylogenetic analysis identified two clades-Hong Kong/2121/2010 and Victoria/208/2009-that had multiple amino acid substitutions at antigenic sites compared with the vaccine strain. Continued: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidr...

Apr 26 Clin Infect Dis abstract: http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/...  

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sat Apr 28, 2012 at 07:06:00 AM UTC

Canada: Five Disasters to Befall BC (British Columbia)

by Crawford Kilian

Earthquakes, pandemics, solar flares; a calamitous pall hangs over our province.

4. Pandemic

When the World Health Organization declared a pandemic over the 2009 H1N1 swine flu outbreak, many thought it was an over-reaction. Actually, H1N1 was a barely dodged bullet and a lesson we still haven't learned. In Hong Kong, which takes influenza very seriously, researchers found an H1N1 attack rate of 10.7 per cent, with about 60 per cent of those infected under the age of 19. If its cousin H5N1 (bird flu) ever learns how to transmit easily from human to human as easily as H1N1, B.C.'s 4.6 million inhabitants would suffer about 494,000 cases.

And if H5N1 retains its horrifying case fatality rate of 60 per cent, that would mean about 296,000 fatalities. Of those, about 177,000 would be teenagers or younger.

B.C. would of course be a minor problem in a national nightmare: Canada would have a total of 3.6 million cases and well over 2 million deaths. Worldwide, 750,000,000 of humanity's seven billion would contract the disease and about 450 million would die.

We can hope that H5N1 never achieves such power, but at some point an influenza strain of some kind will emerge and sweep across the world. It won't spare us, or our health system. If it's only as bad as the Spanish flu of 1918-19, it will be bad enough.

Full story here: http://thetyee.ca/Life/2012/04...

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sat Apr 28, 2012 at 20:17:58 PM UTC

(India: Renewed H1N1 alert in district (Kerala)

The district health administration and the H1N1 Cell have renewed the alert against H1N1 infection after the season's first case of H1N1 in the district was picked up in a Poojappura resident through routine surveillance.

"Ever since the Union Health Ministry issued a general alert on H1N1 to all States in March, we had heightened the routine surveillance of H1N1. Throat swab samples from three randomly selected cases coming to our outpatient clinics with fever, cold, or influenza-like illnesses are being sent daily for testing. This gives us an idea of how many fever and cold cases could actually be H1N1," Amar Fettle, State Nodal Officer, H1N1, told The Hindu.
(Snip)
Special instructions have been issued to district medical officers to direct all health field workers to visit the antenatal cases in the district once every three days and start Tamiflu prophylaxis for the women as soon as any symptoms of fever or cold are suspected. In 2010, 32 ante-natal deaths had been reported in the State.

The public and a large section of the medical community believe that the last three years of H1N1 incidence have rendered the entire community immune to the infection. "Studies done in the latter half of last year in northern districts found the sero prevalence of H1N1 antibodies in the community to be just 24 per cent, while it was much higher in the southern districts. Technically, over 90 per cent of the community would have contracted at least mild forms of H1N1 but only a higher titre of antibodies (level or concentration of antibodies against H1N1) would render full immunity against the infection," Dr. Fettle said.

Directions had been issued through the Directorate of Health Services to all districts in March to send at least two throat swabs daily for H1N1 testing. Yet, in the past two months, only about 200 throat swabs have gone for testing from across the State, indicating the general complacency about the infection among the medical community.

A look at the national figures on H1N1 infection from January to April will certainly make one sit up. Across India, 987 cases of H1N1 have been reported in the past four months, apart from 59 deaths. The distribution of cases are as follows: Andhra Pradesh (115), Karnataka (171), Maharashtra (487), Rajasthan (116), Tamil Nadu (61) and Kerala (14). The number of H1N1 deaths: Andhra Pradesh (12), Karnataka (8), Maharashtra (20), Rajasthan (12), and Tamil Nadu (2).

The threat is certainly not imaginary, especially when one can never rule out mutations in the virus or change in disease patterns. Continued: http://www.thehindu.com/news/c...  

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sat Apr 28, 2012 at 20:24:08 PM UTC

Please post new news stories to...

News Reports for April 29, 2012

Thank you!

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by: AlohaOR @ Sun Apr 29, 2012 at 04:01:56 AM UTC