News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today confirmed two more novel flu infections, one an H3N2 variant that has been identified in 11 other patients this year and one an H1N1 variant that has never been reported in humans before.

(CIDRAP News) – Satellite tracking of wild birds in Asia suggests they may be spreading H5N1 avian influenza from India or Tibet to Mongolia when they fly north in the spring, according to a recent report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Aug 27, 2008 (CIDRAP News) – The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today that the recent novel H1N1 influenza outbreak in turkeys in Chile points up the possibility of poultry outbreaks elsewhere, increasing the risk of H1N1 mixing with the more deadly H5N1 avian flu virus.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) said today it will soon advise most countries to ease the volume of testing for novel H1N1 influenza and said testing related to recent oseltamivir-resistant cases has so far turned up no additional cases.

(CIDRAP News) – An international group of experts has examined and rejected the idea proposed recently by an Australian scientist that the novel H1N1 influenza (swine flu) virus is the product of a laboratory accident, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – The tentative detection of the novel swine influenza H1N1 virus in an Alberta swine herd over the weekend shook Canada's pork industry and raised concern about the potential for new hybrid viruses to emerge.

(CIDRAP News) – To quell the notion that pigs are to blame for the swine influenza H1N1 epidemic, three international agencies said today they would take the "swine" out of the virus's name and call it "influenza A/H1N1" instead.