The flu vaccine in three European nations in 2012-13 provided 33% protection against hospitalization for influenza in adults, according to a study yesterday in PLoS One.
Health officials in China's Guangdong province today reported a fatal H7N9 avian influenza infection in a 42-year-old man, according to a health department statement translated and posted by FluTrackers, an infectious disease news message board.
The agency has approved a plant in Holly Springs, N.C.
Vaccine strains overstimulated some kids' immune systems, and CSL said it has taken steps to reduce the risk.
Avian influenza viruses with components similar to those in the 1918 pandemic flu virus still circulate in nature, and genetic engineering experiments suggest it would take only a few mutations to turn them into a human threat, according to a team of scientists led by Yoshiro Kawaoka, DVM, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin.
Most Northern Hemisphere countries are at or approaching interseasonal flu levels, with North America and eastern Asia still reporting some influenza B circulation, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in its latest global flu update.
The countries at interseasonal levels included China, with the percentage of positive flu tests low in both the northern and southern parts of the country.
US influenza activity continued its season-ending decline, with one flu-related pediatric death reported, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its weekly update.
The percentage of US respiratory specimens that tested positive for flu dropped from 8.7% to 6.5% last week. The percentage of clinic visits for flu fell stayed even at 1.3%, well below the national baseline of 2.2%.
School-based flu vaccination programs may be a good vehicle for moving toward universal coverage of children, but headaches regarding billing and reimbursement issues pose big administrative challenges, says a Colorado study published in Academic Pediatrics.
Although early reports during the 2010-11 flu season suggested possible safety concerns over febrile seizures in kids with the trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (TIV) Fluzone, just-released epidemiologic findings show no statistically significant association, according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Chinese health officials have confirmed what appears to be the first known H5N6 avian influenza infection in a human, a farmer from Sichuan province who had severe pneumonia and died, according to a post yesterday from ProMED-mail, the online reporting system of the International Society for Infectious Diseases.
