Pandemic Influenza

Jun 20, 2007 (CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials last week announced the awarding of contracts totaling $132.5 million to help two vaccine producers get ready to start churning out vaccines in the event of a flu pandemic.

(CIDRAP News) – When vaccine supplies are limited, should children, young adults, or seniors move to the front of the line for shots? Is it appropriate to remove one person from a ventilator to put somebody else on the machine?

(CIDRAP News) – For the first time, evidence suggests that the H5N1 avian influenza virus may have passed from one person to another and on to a third, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) official.

Referring to the extended-family case cluster in Indonesia, the WHO's Maria Cheng told the Canadian Press (CP) yesterday, "This is the first time we have seen cases that have gone beyond one generation of human-to-human spread."

(CIDRAP News) – The United States is sending a load of oseltamivir (Tamiflu) to an undisclosed site in Asia for use in fighting a possible avian influenza pandemic, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt announced yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – The creators of the fictional ABC-TV movie "Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America" blended medical facts from the 1918 influenza pandemic with current predictions from flu experts to portray a contemporary flu pandemic, but they added a liberal dash of sensationalism.

(CIDRAP News) – In an effort to modernize vaccine production while preparing for an influenza pandemic, the US government today awarded five contracts totaling more than $1 billion to develop cell-based technologies for making flu vaccines.

(CIDRAP News) – The White House today released a lengthy new plan describing how the government intends to cope with an influenza pandemic, but officials continued to stress their standard message that states and communities will have to rely mainly on themselves in that situation, with the federal government in an advisory role.

(CIDRAP News) – There is no practical way to clean disposable medical masks and N95 respirators to allow them to safely be reused if supplies run short in an influenza pandemic, a panel of experts at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has concluded.

(CIDRAP News) – European countries' plans for coping with an influenza pandemic are generally good but have a number of gaps, including a lack of detail on distribution of drugs and supplies, according to an analysis published last week by The Lancet.

(CIDRAP News) – Close to half of local public health workers who responded to a survey in three Maryland counties last year said they probably would not come to work during an influenza pandemic, according to a study published today.