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) – With pandemic flu activity declining over the past few months, businesses have a chance to retool some of their response plans, while many grapple with issues such as protective equipment shelf life and how to protect employees when pandemic or seasonal flu returns, corporate executives said today at a webinar.

(CIDRAP News) – Business officials who attended a conference this week on how the business world can cope with the H1N1 influenza pandemic said employee absenteeism was far and away their leading concern.

In live polling conducted during a conference plenary session, 81% of the attendees said their greatest concern about the pandemic was absenteeism. Only 13% said they were most worried about disruption of critical supply chains.

(CIDRAP News) – On the final day of a business preparedness summit in Minneapolis, a panel of experts emphasized having clear, open communication with employees as well as having flexible plans—lessons they learned from being on the frontlines in Mexico and the Southern Hemisphere during the spring novel H1N1 outbreak.

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) – Antiviral resistance and the global economic downturn might present new obstacles for corporate antiviral stockpiling, but two medical experts today said the medications are still quick, reliable tools that can help preserve business continuity in an influenza pandemic.

(CIDRAP News) – News reports that Panasonic Corp. has asked some of its overseas employees to send their families home to Japan because of the threat of pandemic influenza fueled puzzlement and speculation today about the global H5N1 risk and whether other companies might follow suit.

(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.