In a related development, feds recently issued a second call for avian flu vaccine proposals.
Overall flu activity has remained low, with hot spots in only a few areas, such as some Middle Eastern countries including Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar, which are reporting that the 2009 H1N1 virus is the dominant strain, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday in its regular update.
Agriculture officials in Vietnam reported another highly pathogenic H5N1 outbreak in poultry, while Canadian authorities reported that low pathogenic H5N2 turned up in a hunter-shot duck in British Columbia.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) yesterday approved the nation's first seasonal flu vaccine containing an adjuvant—an immune-boosting substance—although European and other countries have used adjuvanted vaccines for years.
African detections signal ongoing H5N1 activity in the region, while Vietnam and Hong Kong both reported H5N6 detections.
US flu activity rose slightly last week, with two regions of the country—the south central and central Midwest—at or above their regional baseline that measures clinic visits for flulike illness, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its weekly update.
Vietnam reported small outbreaks of H5N1 and H5N6 avian flu in backyard poultry flocks, according to reports posted yesterday by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), while Hong Kong officials said they had detected an H5 avian flu virus in a dead Oriental magpie robin.
Nigeria yesterday notified the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) of four outbreaks of H5N1 avian flu affecting more than 31,000 poultry, while South Korea yesterday reported 12 outbreaks of H5N8 avian flu involving more than 140,000 birds that occurred in September and October.
Countries in the Americas and Caribbean reported 4,370 recent cases of chikungunya, bringing the outbreak total to 1,768,106, according to a Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) update from late last week.
Flu vaccination might alleviate symptoms of the H3N2 influenza strain, according to a small study in Vaccine.
US military researchers studied 155 patients with lab-confirmed flu from five military hospitals from 2009 through 2014. Of them, 66 had H3N2 flu, while 69 had 2009 H1N1, 3 had influenza A that wasn't subtyped, and 17 had influenza B. The vaccination rate was 72% (111 patients).
