News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), said today that the H1N1 influenza pandemic isn't over and requires careful monitoring for up to another year.

(CIDRAP News) – Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, and Mongolia will be the first three countries to receive donated supplies of pandemic H1N1 vaccine funneled through the World Health Organization, the WHO announced today as it cautioned that it's too early to declare the pandemic over.

(CIDRAP News) – Sanofi has recalled four lots of its prefilled syringe pandemic vaccine for children ages 6 months through 35 months after its post-distribution monitoring found that antigen content dropped slightly below required levels, a problem that federal officials say isn't linked to any safety concerns.

(CIDRAP News) – Another month's worth of data on H1N1 influenza has led federal officials to more than double their estimates of total cases, hospitalizations, and deaths and to assert that the impact on children and younger adults has been far greater than that of a typical flu season.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization's (WHO's) top influenza expert said today it's too soon to judge whether the H1N1 influenza pandemic has passed its peak, though he acknowledged that cases are dropping in the United States and Canada.

(CIDRAP News) – Decreasing pandemic flu activity and growing supplies of vaccine offer a window of opportunity for people to protect themselves from the virus, especially if the nation experiences a third wave of infections, Thomas Frieden, MD, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today.

(CIDRAP News) – The number of states with widespread pandemic flu activity dropped for the third week in a row, but the virus continued to take a heavy toll on children, with at least 27 more pediatric deaths reported the week of Nov 15 to 21, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today.

(CIDRAP News) – The era of cell-based influenza vaccine production in the United States seemed to move closer today as Novartis unveiled its new, nearly billion-dollar manufacturing plant in Holly Springs, N.C., but onshore production and marketing of cell-based vaccines remains a few years away.

(CIDRAP News) –Pandemic activity is showing early signs of peaking in some parts of North America, but is on the rise in several European countries as well as those in Central and Eastern Asia, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported today.