A woman in China's Jiangsu province has H7N9 avian flu and is hospitalized in critical care, Hong Kong's Department of Health (DH) reported today.
The 58-year-old woman had bought a chicken at a market and slaughtered it prior to having symptoms, the agency said in a news release.
A 2-year serology study using stringent criteria found antibodies to H5N1 avian flu in 2.1% of Egyptians exposed to poultry, a finding that National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials said demonstrates that the virus poses a low pandemic risk.
The $275 million deal will make the company the second leading player in the $4 billion global flu vaccine market.
As the season's first flu deaths occur, some manufacturers have had delays in flu vaccine shipment.
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.
