News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Flu activity in the Northern Hemisphere continued to climb last week, led by a vigorous pace of infections in the United States and Canada in the lead-up to the Christmas holiday season, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today.

(CIDRAP News) – A government advisory committee yesterday endorsed the safety and immunogenicity of an adjuvant-containing H5N1 influenza vaccine proposed for inclusion in the US pandemic emergency stockpile, signaling that it could become the first adjuvanted flu vaccine to win approval in the United States.

(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.

(CIDRAP News) – 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.

(CIDRAP News) – Lapses in health measures during the second season that the 2009 H1N1 flu virus circulated in England probably contributed to a heavier disease burden—marked by more deaths and hospitalizations—than during the 2009-10 pandemic, researchers reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – The lead researcher of one of the controversial H5N1 avian influenza transmission studies in ferrets said today that he hopes scientists can resume work on the studies in about 2 weeks, after key groups have discussed the issues.