Flu ( incl Swine, Bird etc ) 01 (Apr 09 - Sep 12)

[profittaker]

both my parents in law are infected with H1N1 in Malaysia, then I found out that on 26th May 10, a 30 weeks' pregnant woman died of H1N1 in Penang. Flu season is coming again, although Singapore is still free from the virus, it is good to take precautions measure. Take care.

[winston]

H1N1 may be mutating by Ashton Daigle

Researchers overseas think that the H1N1 influenza virus may be mutating, but say more study will be needed to determine how deadly the new strain is.

The slightly new strain is beginning to show up in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, RedOrbit.com reports.

Ian Barr, of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center for Reference and Research on Influenza, in Melbourne, Australia, told RedOrbit.com that more study is needed to determine if current H1N1 vaccines can protect against the new strain completely.

“It may represent the start of more dramatic antigenic drift of the pandemic influenza A-(H1N1) viruses that may require a vaccine update sooner than might have been expected,” Barr said, RedOrbit.com reports.

Influenza strains constantly mutate, which is one reason why people should be vaccinated annually.The H1N1 pandemic was officially declared over in August by the WHO. The current seasonal flu vaccine protects against all three flu strains.

Barr said the new H1N1 variants were first detected in Singapore in early 2010, but have now spread throughout New Zealand and Australia. As of this point, Barr and fellow researchers say the new variant has yet to become significant.

Since there have been some cases of people who were vaccinated and becoming infected and several deaths, Barr said the new strain should continue to be monitored closely, RedOrbit.com reports.

“Already this variant virus has been associated with several vaccine breakthroughs in teenagers and adults vaccinated in 2010 with monovalent pandemic influenza vaccine (protecting against only H1N1) as well as a number of fatal cases from whom the variant virus was isolated,” Barr said, RedOrbit.com reports.

Barr also said there is not enough evidence to determine if other factors could have made patients more vulnerable.

“It remains to be seen whether this variant will continue to predominate for the rest of the influenza season in Oceania and in other parts of the southern hemisphere and then spread to the northern hemisphere or merely die out,” Barr said, according to RedOrbit.com.

http://vaccinenewsdaily.com/news/218320 ... e-mutating

[winston]

DJ Hong Kong Confirms Its First Bird Flu Case In Humans Since 2003

HONG KONG (AFP)--Hong Kong has confirmed its first case of bird flu in humans in seven years, with a 59-year-old woman in a serious condition after a visit to mainland China, health officials said Thursday.

The government has raised Hong Kong's bird flu alert to 'serious,' meaning there is a 'high risk' of contracting the potentially fatal disease, a spokesman for the Department of Health said.

Health officials say the 59-year-old woman tested positive for Influenza A (H5), a variant of avian influenza, after she was first diagnosed with pneumonia. She is now listed in a serious condition in hospital.

Source: Dow Jones Newswire

[LenaHuat]

It's H5N1 in HK whilst our singer, JJ, is sick with H1N1 in Taipei Coupled with the cholera outbreak in Haiti and Papua N Guinea , will our pharmaceutical exports continue to spike up?

[winston]

10 DEAD FROM NEW BOUT OF INFECTIONS
H1N1 back in Britain

LONDON - THE H1N1 swine flu virus which swept the globe last year has returned to Britain with 10 people dying in the last six weeks, health officials said on Saturday.

Britain's Health Protection Agency said the 10 deaths had occurred in adults all under the age of 65, most of whom had underlying health issues.

[winston]

Japan culls 10,000 chickens to contain bird flu

Japan has began slaughtering some 10,000 chickens at a poultry farm in western Miyazaki prefecture in a bid to contain an outbreak of bird flu, according to the local government.

Officials in the prefecture, 900 kilometres (560 miles) southwest of Tokyo, said 36 chickens were found dead on Friday at the poultry farm.

Preliminary tests confirmed that six of the birds had died of the H5 subtype of the avian flu virus, the officials said.

In an effort to prevent a larger outbreak, the local government decided to slaughter all the chickens at the farm while setting up 20 checkpoints for disinfection and banned any movement of chickens within 10 kilometres.

It was the first bird flu outbreak since 2007 in Miyazaki, where a foot-and-mouth outbreak also forced the slaughter of almost 300,000 farm animals last year.

In Tokyo, Prime Minister Naoto Kan set up a task force Saturday morning to "promptly" introduce necessary measures to contain the bird flu outbreak, officials said.

Source: AFP Asian Edition

[winston]

Two critical with swine flu in Hong Kong: hospital
ATN - January 22nd, 2011

HONG KONG, Jan 21, 2011 (AFP) – Two people were in critical condition in a Hong Kong hospital suffering from swine flu, health officials said Friday, one and a half years after an outbreak that killed 80 people in the city.

“A 21-year-old female is in critical condition after contracting swine flu”, a spokeswoman for Hong Kong’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital told AFP.

The woman, from mainland China, was admitted to hospital on January 11 and transferred to the intensive care unit on Tuesday, the spokeswoman said, adding that she could not confirm in the woman was infected outside the city.

Also Tuesday, a two-year-old girl was placed in the hospital’s intensive care unit after she contracted the illness, the spokeswoman said.

Hong Kong is very nervous about infectious diseases following the outbreak of the SARS virus in 2003, which killed 300 people in the city and a further 500 around the world.

http://www.anytimesnews.com/2011/01/22/ ... g-hospital

[winston]

On CNBC:-

japan culled 410,000 chickens

[winston]

Swine flu kills woman in grim start to year by Mary Ann Benitez

A 27-year-old woman has become the territory's first swine flu fatality of the year amid a state of heightened alert.

She died on Tuesday at Tseung Kwan O Hospital, but the cause of death was only announced yesterday.

The victim had no chronic disease and the case has been referred to the coroner, the Hospital Authority said.

http://thestandard.com.hk/

[winston]

Moscow schools shut down due to flu

MOSCOW (AFP) - – Moscow and at least two other cities shut all their elementary schools Saturday to help fight one of the worst flu outbreaks to hit central Russia in more than a decade, officials said.

The Moscow closure would affect more than 1,500 schools.

Education officials said this meant that nearly 500,000 children would get an unscheduled week-long vacation in the first such shutdown to strike the Russian capital since 1998.

"Even today, some classes are already missing half their students" an official with Moscow's health control service told the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily.

"The situation in Moscow is relatively favourable compared to what it is in the other regions" of central Russia, Alexander Gavrilov said.

Moscow's kindergartens would remain open and older children would not be affected. But officials have issued instruction for parents to take extra care with younger children and avoid spending too much time with them in public places.

The Moscow education department's order covers both public and private schools.

The instructions were issued after schools reported empty class rooms in which lessons were being taught to just a handful of kids at a time.

"A lot of our students our out. So it just made sense to close the schools instead teaching three or four kids and then having everyone else catch up," one Moscow school director told the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper.

Some education officials complained that Moscow schools were ill equipped to fight such outbreaks and that there was a general shortage of doctors on staff.

But the city defended itself against such criticism and said outbreaks occasionally happened no matter what.

"We have vaccinated an entire 30 percent (of the Moscow population) against the regular flu," the Kommersant business daily quoted the city's chief sanitation official as saying.

"We are working -- but we can provide no guarantees," Nikolai Filatov said.

Officials said that nearly 92,000 Muscovites are currently suffering from the flu or respiratory infections. More than 52,000 of them are children -- a 42 percent spike on previous years' averages.

Officials said some 300 schools had already closed their doors across Russia by Friday evening.

News reports said that a similar week-long closure has also been ordered in the industrial Ural city of Chelyabinsk and Russia's northern Far East town of Yakutsk

Other regions of central Russia were also shutting some of their schools for the week.

The outbreak was accompanied by new reports of the swine flu spreading through Moscow and other major cities.

There were were 93 H1N1 infections but no deaths reported in Moscow.

But RIA Novosti said that a two-year-old girl had died from the respiratory disease in the northwestern region of Murmansk and that a Ukrainian national had died in the central Russian city of Volgograd.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20110129/t ... 9a08e.html