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(CIDRAP News) – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found serious problems at the Chiron Corp. flu vaccine plant in England in 2003 but failed to follow up in time to prevent the loss of half of the US vaccine supply with the plant's shutdown by British regulators last month, a Democratic congressman charged last week.

(CIDRAP News) – The Sri Racha Tiger Zoo in Thailand reopened Nov 18, one day after Thai authorities reported a final tally of 102 tigers lost in the zoo's outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza.

(CIDRAP News) – Before the current influenza vaccine shortage arose, Colorado was vaccinating people in mass clinics. After the shortage hit, the preventive medicine chief for the state's Kaiser Permanente clinics found himself driving around with leftover vaccine in his car, calling for information on which hospitals needed the doses.

(CIDRAP News) – The federal government announced this week it is launching a campaign to map the genetic blueprint of thousands of human and avian influenza viruses in an effort to better understand how flu viruses evolve, spread, and cause disease.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said today it is running confirmatory tests on a possible new case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease.

(CIDRAP News) – Kris Ehresmann, RN, MPH, clearly recalls when she learned the United States had just lost nearly half of its flu vaccine.

At 9:50 a.m. on Oct 5, Ehresmann knew that her job as manager of the immunization, tuberculosis, and international health section for the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) had instantly become much harder. That moment marked the beginning of a series of difficult decisions under fast-changing circumstances.

(CIDRAP News) – Clinical trials of a vaccine designed to keep the H5N1 avian influenza virus from sparking a human flu pandemic will begin early in 2005, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) said this week.

(CIDRAP News) – The nature of the widespread avian influenza outbreaks in Asia points to the threat of a human flu pandemic that could rival the disastrous pandemic of 1918-1920, infectious disease expert Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH, warned in a public forum in Minneapolis last week.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization's top influenza expert warned at the end of a 2-day international meeting today that governments need to fund the development of vaccines to combat a feared flu pandemic that could kill millions of people, according to news services.

(CIDRAP News) – The outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza in Asia gives the world its first opportunity to prepare a vaccine in advance for a potential pandemic strain of flu, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today as it convened a meeting of vaccine companies and health officials to consider the challenge.

(CIDRAP News) – Massachusetts residents in at least three communities are hoping to obtain flu shots through the luck of the draw as local health departments seek the fairest way to distribute limited vaccine supplies among those who need them the most.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and major US airlines announced an interim agreement this week to strengthen procedures for testing and disinfecting drinking-water systems on airliners.

(CIDRAP News) – The current shortage of influenza vaccine has generated new support for proposed federal legislation introduced last January that would make the production of flu vaccine more financially attractive, according to sponsors of the bill.

(CIDRAP News) – In an effort to spread the impact of the influenza vaccine shortage fairly, federal health officials today announced a plan to share most of the approximately 11 million remaining doses of injectable vaccine among states on the basis of need.

Editor's note: A correction was made in this story Nov 9 to make clear that the licensed anthrax vaccine does not contain the recombinant form of anthrax protective antigen.

(CIDRAP News) – The Department of Health and Human Service (HHS) said last week that it plans to buy up to 5 million doses of the controversial anthrax vaccine currently used by the US military and put it in the national stockpile for civilian use.

(CIDRAP News) – An Iowa company will develop an avian influenza vaccine antigen bank that could produce up to 40 million doses of vaccine for poultry, the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced recently.

Editor's note: A correction was made in this story Nov 9 to note that the existing licensed anthrax vaccine contains the natural rather than recombinant form of anthrax protective antigen.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials today announced the award of an $877 million contract for 75 million doses of a new anthrax vaccine to protect the public and improve on the existing vaccine used by the military.

(CIDRAP News) – Two studies just published by the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) suggest that injecting influenza vaccine just beneath the skin surface, instead of into muscle, may be a way to stretch flu vaccine supplies without sacrificing protection.

(CIDRAP News) – To guard against SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), the Chinese government has banned the killing and cooking of civets, which have been carriers of the SARS virus in southern China, according to news reports yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – A dead gray heron found in Hong Kong had H5N1 avian influenza, according to news reports.

A railway worker in the restricted area of Lok Ma Chau found the heron and turned it over to the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department for testing Nov 1, according to Xinhua, the Chinese government news agency, and Agence France-Presse (AFP).