Home
Face Masks
Survival Tips
Hand Cleaning
Letters
Emergency Supplies
FAQS
Quarantine
Business Continuity
Links
About Us
Tamiflu
Videos
Flu Season Off to a Very Late Start: CDC
There's been an uptick in cases in February, but this is latest arrival in decades
February 23, 2012
By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, Feb. 23 (HealthDay News) -- It took a long time to get started, but this winter's flu season is finally here, say experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
They report that flu activity picked up in the past couple of weeks, making this the latest start to any influenza season since 1987-1988. Lab-confirmed cases of influenza have now been spotted in all 50 states, but the weekly percentage of lab-tested respiratory specimens did not exceed 10 percent -- the threshold for declaring that a flu season has begun -- until Feb. 4, the CDC report found.
Why this year's flu season is starting so late is most likely the result of a complex set of circumstances that remain unclear, said Dr. Joseph Bresee, chief of the CDC's epidemiology and prevention branch in the CDC's influenza division.
"It's probably related to several things and probably other things we don't understand well," Bresee said. "Mostly, it's related probably to the fact that flu is unpredictable. There are a lot of things about flu we don't understand."
The flu update was published in the Feb. 24 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a CDC publication.
In most flu seasons, there are some 200,000 hospitalizations and 36,000 deaths from flu complications, according to the CDC.
However, so far hospitalizations for flu have remained below epidemic levels -- just one hospitalization per 100,000 people, compared to nearly 22 per 100,000 people in the 2010-2011 season.
There have been reports of three infant deaths in the United States so far from flu complications, much lower than the total of 122 flu-linked infant deaths seen last season and the 348 infant deaths observed during the 2009-2010 H1N1 pandemic.
Only one state, California, is reporting "widespread" influenza cases, the CDC added.
This year, three flu strains are circulating: Influenza A (H3N2) viruses (which has predominated this season), influenza A H1N1 (the "swine flu" strain) and influenza B.
These strains haven't evolved or mutated and are the same strains that have been circulating for the past few years, Bresee said. They also match the strains included in the flu vaccine over the past two years.
Good vaccination coverage may be playing a role in flu's relative inactivity this year. "We have had very high vaccination rates in the last couple of years, and that probably dampens the amount of flu," Bresee said. "The underlying immunity of the population is probably higher than it usually is to the viruses we are seeing."
"But there are a lot of things that play into it, most of which we don't understand but are thankful for," Bresee added.
And does the late arrival of the flu herald its early departure this year? "It's hard to know if the late start to the flu season means that it will go on longer," Bresee said.
"We are getting a late start, but we don't know when the peak will be, if it will be a lower peak or a normal peak," he said. "We always can predict after the year is over, sadly."
"So, the good news is that because of the late start, folks who haven't been vaccinated still have a chance to do so," Bresee said. "Since we are seeing a late start, most communities have the opportunity to get vaccinated ahead of the flu season."
Everyone aged 6 months and older should get a flu shot, according to the CDC.
Alarm as Dutch lab creates highly contagious killer flu
Fear of terrorism as university prepares to publish key details
Steve Connor
Tuesday, 20 December 2011
A deadly strain of bird flu with the potential to infect and kill millions of people has been created in a laboratory by European scientists – who now want to publish full details of how they did it.
The discovery has prompted fears within the US Government that the knowledge will fall into the hands of terrorists wanting to use it as a bio-weapon of mass destruction.
Some scientists are questioning whether the research should ever have been undertaken in a university laboratory, instead of at a military facility.
The US Government is now taking advice on whether the information is too dangerous to be published.
To see the graphic: The last outbreak - A deadly virus even before the latest twist
"The fear is that if you create something this deadly and it goes into a global pandemic, the mortality and cost to the world could be massive," a senior scientific adviser to the US Government told The Independent, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"The worst-case scenario here is worse than anything you can imagine."
For the first time the researchers have been able to mutate the H5N1 strain of avian influenza so that it can be transmitted easily through the air in coughs and sneezes. Until now, it was thought that H5N1 bird flu could only be transmitted between humans via very close physical contact.
Dutch scientists carried out the controversial research to discover how easy it was to genetically mutate H5N1 into a highly infectious "airborne" strain of human flu. They believe that the knowledge gained will be vital for the development of new vaccines and drugs.
But critics say the scientists have endangered the world by creating a highly dangerous form of flu which could escape from the laboratory – as well as opening a Pandora's box for fanatical terrorists wishing to make a bio-weapon.
The H5N1 strain of avian influenza has killed hundreds of millions of birds since it first appeared in 1996, but has so far infected only about 600 people who came into direct contact with infected poultry.
What makes H5N1 so dangerous, though, is that it has killed about 60 per cent of those it has infected, making it one of the most lethal known forms of influenza in modern history – a deadliness moderated only by its inability (so far) to spread easily through airborne water droplets.
Scientists are in little doubt that the newly created strain of H5N1 – resulting from just five mutations in two key genes – has the potential to cause a devastating human pandemic that could kill tens of millions of people. The study was carried out on ferrets, which when infected with influenza are the best animal "model" of the human disease.
The details of the study are so sensitive that they are being scrutinised by the US Government's own National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, which is understood to have advised American officials that key parts of the scientific paper should be redacted to prevent terrorists from using the information to reverse-engineer their own lethal strain of flu virus.
In an unprecedented move, the Biosecurity board is believed to have told the US Government that there is a serious possibility of potentially dangerous information being misused if the full genetic sequence of the mutated H5N1 virus were to be published in open scientific literature.
A senior source close to the Biosecurity board, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Independent that the National Institutes of Health, which funded the work, is about to make a decision on how much of the scientific paper on the H5N1 super strain should be published, and how much held back.
"There are areas of science where information needs to be controlled," the scientist said. "The most extreme examples are, for instance, how to make a nuclear weapon or any weapon that is going to be used primarily to kill people. The life sciences really haven't encountered this situation before. It's really a new age."
The study was carried out by a Dutch team of scientists led by Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, where the mutated virus is stored under lock and key, but without armed guards, in a basement building.
Dr Fouchier, who declined to answer questions until a decision is made on publication, said in a statement released on the university's website that it only took a small number of mutations to change the avian flu virus into a form that could spread more easily between humans.
"We have discovered that this is indeed possible, and more easily than previously thought. In the laboratory, it was possible to change H5N1 into an aerosol-transmissible virus that can easily be rapidly spread through the air," Dr Fouchier said. "This process could also take place in a natural setting.
"We know which mutation to watch for in the case of an outbreak and we can then stop the outbreak before it is too late. Furthermore, the finding will help in the timely development of vaccinations and medication."
A second, independent team of researchers led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the universities of Wisconsin and Tokyo is understood to have carried out similar work with similar results, which has underlined how easy it is to create the super virus with a combination of deliberate mutations and random genetic changes brought about by passing avian flu manually from the nose of one ferret to another.
Some scientists have privately questioned whether such research should have been done in a university department that does not have the sophisticated anti-terrorist security of a military facility. They also point out that experimental viruses kept in seemingly secure laboratories have escaped in the past to cause human epidemics – such as a 1977 flu outbreak.
"There are people who say that the work should never have been done, or if it was done it should have been done in a setting where the information could be better controlled," said the source close to the biosecurity board.
"With influenza now it is possible to reverse engineer the virus. It's pretty common technology in many parts of the world. With the genomic sequence, you can reconstruct it. That's where the information is dangerous," he said.
"It's scary from a number of different angles. You want to have the vaccines and therapeutics in place, and you need to have a much information as you can about a particular virus, but you also worry about it from a biosecurity perspective."
Profile: researcher behind the science<br>
Ron Fouchier
The Dutch virologist started as an expert in HIV, having received his PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 1995. After research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, he began a new career in the virology department at Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, studying the molecular biology of the influenza A virus.
At a conference in Malta in September, he described his work as something that was "really, really stupid," but ultimately useful for the development of vaccines.
Had flu? The next pandemic could hit you harder
WHY did the 2009 swine flu pandemic kill so many more young adults than children? Paradoxically, it might be because of past exposure to seasonal flu.
When Fernando Polack of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and colleagues studied 75 adults with swine flu they found severe cases had more antibodies that bound to the virus but didn't kill it (Nature Medicine, DOI: 10.1038/nm.2262). A tangle of virus and antibodies in their lungs activated an immune system component called complement, which failed to clear the mess and instead attacked lung tissue.
Polack says adults acquire the weak antibodies from past bouts of flu, and that they bind to the novel virus just strongly enough to make it worse. The effect could pose problems for a universal flu vaccine, as it might elicit antibodies that do not bind strongly enough to every flu virus to kill it.
|
An HPA spokeswoman said there had been an increase in the number of flu cases being reported at doctors' surgeries across Britain but this was to be expected over the winter months.
"In terms of actual numbers of cases of flu, it's nothing unusual," she said.
New strain of swine flu emerges: report
May infect people who have already been vaccinated
By Maggie Fox, ReutersOctober 22, 2010
The H1N1 swine flu virus may be starting to mutate, and a slightly new form has begun to predominate in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, researchers reported Thursday.
More study is needed to tell whether the new strain is more likely to kill patients and whether the current vaccine can protect against it completely, said Ian Barr of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza in Melbourne, Australia and colleagues.
"However, it may represent the start of more dramatic antigenic drift of the pandemic influenza A (H1N1) viruses that may require a vaccine update sooner than might have been expected," they wrote in the online publication Eurosurveillance.
It is possible it is both more deadly and also able to infect people who have been vaccinated, they said.
Flu viruses mutate constantly -- this is why people need a fresh flu vaccine every year.
Since it broke out in March 2009 and spread globally, the H1N1 swine flu virus has been very stable, with almost no mutation.
Scientists around the world keep an eye on all flu strains in case an especially dangerous new mutant emerges.
While H1N1 turned out not to be especially deadly, it spread globally within weeks and killed more children and young adults than an average strain does.
WHO declared the pandemic over in August, but H1N1 has now taken over as the main seasonal flu strain circulating almost everywhere but South Africa, where H3N2 and influenza B are more common. The current seasonal flu vaccine protects against H1N1, H3N2 and the B strain.
"The virus has changed little since it emerged in 2009, however, in this report we describe several genetically distinct changes in the pandemic H1N1 influenza virus," Barr's team wrote in the report, available at http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId-19692.
"These variants were first detected in Singapore in early 2010 and have subsequently spread through Australia and New Zealand."
The changes are not significant yet, they said. But there have been some cases of people who were vaccinated also becoming infected, and also some deaths.
|
