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(CIDRAP News) – The anthrax-laced letter sent to Sen. Tom Daschle's office in 2001 may have affected more people than was recognized at the time, but the antibiotics and vaccinations given to potentially exposed people were highly effective, according to an immunologic study of the event.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a refrigerated form of FluMist, the nasal-spray influenza vaccine, which should be more convenient for providers than the current formulation, MedImmune Inc. announced yesterday.

FluMist, a live attenuated vaccine first approved in 2003, is currently approved for use in healthy children and adults from ages 5 to 49 years.

(CIDRAP News) – Two Indonesians have been hospitalized in less than a week with H5N1 avian influenza infections, the country’s first in more than a month, according to news services.

Indonesia’s health ministry told Bloomberg News yesterday that a 14-year-old boy who tested positive for the H5N1 virus was being treated at Persahabatan Hospital in Jakarta after showing flulike symptoms on Jan 1.

(CIDRAP News) – Hong Kong government officials recently announced that a wild bird found dead near a busy shopping district on Dec 31 tested positive for H5N1 avian influenza.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) yesterday proposed to reopen the US border to older Canadian cattle and beef for the first time since bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) cropped up in Canada in 2003.

(CIDRAP News) – In an effort to expand the pool of antiviral drugs for influenza, the US government yesterday awarded a $102.6 million contract to BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Birmingham, Ala., to develop peramivir, a new neuraminidase inhibitor.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal officials have announced the launch of the first clinical trial of an H5N1 avian influenza vaccine made from a piece of the virus's DNA rather than from the whole virus, an approach that may facilitate faster vaccine production.

(CIDRAP News) – California scientists report that their analysis of the medical literature has yielded data on more than 600 molecular components of influenza A viruses that trigger immune responses, findings they hope will spur the search for vaccines offering protection against multiple flu strains.

For some 2 million Americans registered with 260 embassies or consulates abroad, the US government says its Web site (www.pandemicflu.gov) is designed to provide the latest information on avian and pandemic influenza.

(CIDRAP News) – The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) recently gave preliminary approval for field use of the world's first vaccine to reduce Escherichia coli O157:H7 in cattle and thereby help keep it out of food.

(CIDRAP News) – In a recent update on pandemic influenza preparedness planning, the US government reported meeting more than 90% of a long list of objectives it set for itself about 6 months ago.

The report charts progress on a wide range of preparedness measures, from shoring up laboratory capabilities to planning for distribution of critical medical supplies and preparing checklists for various sectors of the economy.

(CIDRAP News) – A 26-year-old Egyptian man died of H5N1 avian influenza today, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported, bringing to 3 the number of deaths from the disease since Christmas Eve.

A 30-year-old woman died Dec 24, and a 15-year-old girl died Dec 25, several media outlets reported. The three patients become Egypt's 16th, 17th, and 18th cases and the country's 8th, 9th, and 10th deaths.

(CIDRAP News) – More poultry have died of H5N1 avian influenza in Vietnamese provinces where the virus recently re-emerged, and the disease has spread to another province in South Korea and 3 more Nigerian states, according to news reports.

(CIDRAP News) – Scientists who analyzed mortality records from the 1918 influenza pandemic estimate that a similarly severe pandemic today would kill about 62 million people worldwide, the vast majority of them in the developing world.

(CIDRAP News) – The Department of Health and Human Services is seeking help from the public in figuring out how to allocate scarce supplies of influenza vaccine in the event of a flu pandemic.

In a Dec 14 Federal Register notice, HHS invited the public to submit comments on which groups should have priority for receiving pre-pandemic and pandemic vaccines and on related issues. The deadline for commenting is Jan 18, 2007.

(CIDRAP News) – Government investigators were unable to determine where Canada's latest cow infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was born, making it impossible to tell how the animal was exposed to the disease or find other cows that might have been exposed, the Canadian government said this week.

(CIDRAP News) – The US government yesterday canceled its $877.5 million contract with VaxGen Inc. for a new anthrax vaccine, after problems with the vaccine's stability caused the company to miss a deadline for starting a clinical trial.

(CIDRAP News) – Vietnam's first major outbreaks of H5N1 avian influenza since last year struck two poultry farms in the southern Mekong Delta recently, government officials reported yesterday.

Has your business taken into account what happens to your water supply when an influenza pandemic begins?