News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Flu activity remained low in the Northern Hemisphere last week, with only a few countries, such as Costa Rica and Cameroon, reporting spikes in the number of cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today.

Costa Rica is the only tropical country in the Americas to report increasing numbers of cases, which are primarily influenza A/H3N2, the WHO said.

(CIDRAP News) – Local or regional influenza outbreaks in a handful of countries were the only exceptions to a global pattern of low flu activity in recent weeks, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in its biweekly flu update today.

Swine reassortant suggests 2009 H1N1 virus could cause more troubleScientists have found a hybrid influenza virus in swine that combines elements of the pandemic 2009 H1N1 virus and a Eurasian swine flu virus, suggesting that continued circulation of the pandemic virus in pigs could lead to novel viruses with the ability to infect humans, according to a report published yesterday in the Journal of Virology. The detection of the pandemic virus in pigs prompted a flu

(CIDRAP News) – A five-country study from Europe indicates that the use of adjuvanted vaccines against the pandemic H1N1 influenza virus probably did not increase the risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), but the investigators could not firmly rule out a slightly greater chance of suffering the paralytic condition.

(CIDRAP News) – Questions abounded today concerning the large and growing outbreak of Escherichia coli infections concentrated in northern Germany, including where it came from, why it is striking mostly women, and why the number of reported hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) cases, at 276, is so unusually high.

(CIDRAP News) – Foodborne illness investigations in several states have prompted two product recalls, involving cantaloupe suspected as the cause of Salmonella infections and Lebanon bologna that may have ties to Escherichia coli O157:H7 illnesses.

In both outbreaks, epidemiological investigations by state and federal experts identified the suspected foods. So far the pathogens have not been detected in cantaloupe or bologna samples.

(CIDRAP News) – US health officials today gave a mixed report on influenza activity for last week, saying overall activity decreased slightly but more states reported widespread flu than the week before.

In Europe, meanwhile, flu activity increased in several countries, and the United Kingdom and Denmark reported high flu circulation, according to the World Health Organization's (WHO's) European Regional Office.