Signs of antigenic drift led the WHO to changing two of the vaccine's strains for the Southern Hemisphere.
Coverage last season was about 82% in health workers and 52% in pregnant women.
GSK, Canada's largest flu vaccine supplier, said today it won't be able to fill about 30% of its Canadian order for the upcoming flu season because of problems at its Ste. Foy, Que., plant, the Canadian Press reported today.
It's unclear how the deficit will affect GSK doses in the United States, a GSK spokesman told CIDRAP News.
Sequence analysis of human and environmental samples demonstrated that four strains of reassorted H7N9 avian flu viruses have been circulating in Guangdong province—one of the country's hardest hit—and that an increase of human cases last year coincided with an increase in H7 isolates in environmental samples, according to a study today in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Researchers who sifted data from 12 recent influenza seasons in Finland concluded that about 42% of influenza B cases involved strains that were not targeted by the vaccine, which they say supports the inclusion of both influenza B lineages in seasonal flu vaccines.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Aug 15 that it had approved the administration of bioCSL's Afluria inactivated influenza vaccine for use with ajet-injector device, the PharmaJet Stratis. The approval applies to intramuscular injection only in adults ages 18 through 64 years, the FDA said in its statement.
A federal vaccine advisory group yesterday recommended that adults age 65 and older receive the Prevnar 13 pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, according to a press release from Pfizer Inc., the vaccine's maker. Using the vaccine alongside the current 23-valent pneumococcal vaccine is thought to provide broader protection.
Study suggests the high-dose flu vaccine gives seniors significantly better protection than standard-dose vaccines.
H7N9 avian flu, which emerged in humans in China in the spring of 2013 and has since caused more than 450 cases, was found to replicate well in both the upper and lower respiratory tracts of cynomolgus macaques, a model for humans, and to show extended replication in the upper tract, indicating the possibility of prolonged shedding and transmissibility, say findings of a study today in mBio.
A World Health Organization (WHO) emergency committee has extended a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) over the global polio situation and the temporary recommendations that came with it, the WHO said in a statement yesterday. The group met by teleconference on Jul 31, its first meeting since it first declared the PHEIC on May 5.
