Smallpox

(CIDRAP News) Ð No serious adversereactions have been reported among the first 4,213 civilian healthcare workersvaccinated against smallpox, according to the Centers for Disease Control andPrevention (CDC).

(CIDRAP News) – Although federal health officials have not endorsed the use of an available safety needle in the current smallpox vaccination program, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) plans to take a careful look at the needle to determine if it should be used in the future, a CDC official says.

(CIDRAP News) – Two men have had encephalitis and one contracted myocarditis after getting smallpox shots in the US military vaccination program, but all three have recovered, a Department of Defense (DoD) vaccine expert said today.

(CIDRAP News) – The count of public health workers vaccinated against smallpox has more than doubled in the past few days, with a boost from a Florida program in which 503 people were vaccinated yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – A group of universities and private companies have launched an effort to harness donated computer time from millions of personal computers in the hunt for a drug to treat smallpox.

The Smallpox Research Grid Project will use personal computers around the world to analyze interactions between 35 million potential drug molecules and several smallpox virus proteins, according to United Devices, the company coordinating the effort.

(CIDRAP News) – With about 700 people vaccinated so far in the government's campaign to immunize frontline healthcare workers against smallpox, no adverse events have been reported, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today.

(CIDRAP News) – Close to 200,000 doses of smallpox vaccine have been shipped to 35 states and two major cities since the vaccination program began Jan 24, but only about 700 healthcare workers have been vaccinated so far, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

(CIDRAP News) – Only two cases of "noteworthy" complications from smallpox vaccination have occurred among tens of thousands of troops who have received shots since the military vaccination program began in mid-December, according to a Department of Defense (DoD) report released today.

(CIDRAP News) – People who will be receiving their first smallpox shot in coming weeks are getting a small break from the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization practices (ACIP): Instead of 15 pricks of the needle, the ACIP is now recommending only three.

(CIDRAP News) – A case described in this week's New England Journal of Medicine illustrates some practical obstacles to quick diagnosis of illnesses that look like smallpox, including potential problems in sending clinical samples to outside laboratories for analysis.