News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Deaths from pneumonia and flu in the United States rose sharply last week, with a rise in hospitalizations that continues to hit older people the hardest, though other disease indicators showed declines, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – In a new analysis of serologic studies from 19 countries, researchers estimate that about 24% of the population were infected with the 2009 H1N1 influenza (pH1N1) virus during the first year of the pandemic, a finding modestly higher than what US health officials estimated in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic.

(CIDRAP News) – Flu activity indicators showed some wobble last week, which might suggest that activity in the United States is starting to ebb in some locations or could reflect some artifacts of disease reporting that health officials sometimes see over the holiday period.

(CIDRAP News) – The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) today confirmed a link between narcolepsy and pandemic 2009 H1N1 vaccination in children in Finland and Sweden, the two countries that originally reported a problem with the vaccine.