News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday approved the nation's first cell-based flu vaccine, a product from Novartis that uses technology that could help vaccinate more Americans in a pandemic but still has many of the same limitations of older egg-based flu vaccines.

The world needs much better influenza vaccines, but the quest for them faces a formidable barrier: overconfidence about the effectiveness of existing influenza vaccines.

(CIDRAP News) – US health officials today announced the establishment of three public-private centers designed to give the nation a new and stronger ability to quickly make vaccines and drugs to respond to bioterrorist attacks, pandemic influenza, and other public health emergencies.

(CIDRAP News) – The federal agency tasked with shoring up the nation's preparedness against a host of public health emergencies released a plan yesterday to help it and other partners focus and coordinate steps to meet national preparedness objectives.

(CIDRAP News) – Employees without paid sick days were more likely to work when they were sick during the peak of the fall pandemic wave and may have extended the outbreak by infecting their coworkers, according to a research group.

Sept 23, 2009 (CIDRAP News) – To mask or not to mask, hand washing versus hand sanitizers, how long to stay away from the workplace if sick with novel H1N1 influenza, tips for travel—these were some of the issues addressed in a panel discussion yesterday during a business preparedness summit in Minneapolis.

(CIDRAP News) – With the second wave of the H1N1 influenza virus now hitting, much of the response toe the pandemic is focused on the development and distribution of an effective vaccine, a project that poses many challenges and uncertainties.

(CIDRAP News) – A new report from the University of Minnesota warns that an influenza pandemic could disrupt the coal industry, thereby endangering the nation's significantly coal-dependent electric power system and everything that depends on it.

(CIDRAP News) – A flu vaccine manufacturer's decision not to build a US facility has highlighted the perpetual mismatch between flu-shot supply and demand—and the reality that the mismatch may undermine plans for pandemic flu vaccines.