Swine Flu Cures: May 2009

Monday, May 18, 2009

Swine Flu Cures

If you know anything that helps, list a comment

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

How One Person CURED Swine Flu Without Vaccine

Yes thats right, garlic will cure any condition that is detrimental to the immune system.
Garlic has been used for thousands of years for that purpose alone, but has lost of its merit now that people these days know next to nothing to treating a condition by themselves.

I would say that getting organic garlic is beneficial, because with organic, The garlic hasn't been treated with poison that kill its potency.

To treat the swine flu with garlic take 16 cloves of raw garlic a day until better. And if you concerned about getting the swine flu or have any tind of condition where the immune system has been hurt, take 4 cloves of raw garlic a day. This will keep your immune system functioning optimally and well.

Garlic alone will cure swine flu. garlic is the foremost cure for swine flu, and any condition where the immune system is weakened.

Blogger News, The Truth, And Swine Flu Cures

Well apparently this blog is doing something wrong according to blogger. I can't publish new post until some person reviews this site, for whatever reason.

Why is there such resistance to the fact that the swine flu is an easily treatable condition. Shouldn't people know how easy it is to treat the swine flu? Ever since i've made this blog there hasn't been one person saying anything positive. just a bunch of fools who think i'm a spammer or a charlatan.

Why do people think that there is any untreatable incurable disease, because there isn't. Every condition has a cure. It's hard for a lot of people belief systems to digest, but they may get it one day, more than likely not, but i'll play the optimist.

I really have nothing against the blogger personally, but if they do anything to this blog i will probably move all my blogs to another blogging site. And recommend that my friends do the same.

"Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather Expose them" Ephesians 5:11

heres what they sent me

"This blog has been locked due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations. You may not publish new posts until your blog is reviewed and unlocked. This blog will be deleted within 20 days unless you request a review"

Until again,

Theoneall

W.H.O.'s tally of A/H1N1 influenza cases rises to 4,379

GENEVA (Xinhua) - As of 0730 GMT today, 29 countries have officially reported 4,379 laboratory confirmed human cases of A/H1N1 infection, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a latest report.

Mexico, the epicenter of the outbreak, has reported 1,626 confirmed cases, including 45 deaths.

The United States has reported 2,254 cases, including two deaths.

Canada has reported 280 laboratory confirmed human cases, including one death.

Costa Rica has reported eight confirmed cases, including one death.

The following countries have reported laboratory confirmed cases with no deaths: Argentina (1), Australia (1), Austria (1), Brazil (6), China's Hong Kong (1), Colombia (1), Denmark (1), El Salvador (2), France (12), Germany (11), Guatemala (1), Ireland (1), Israel (7), Italy (9), Japan (4), the Netherlands (3), New Zealand (7), Panama (3), Poland (1), Portugal (1), Republic of Korea (3), Spain (93), Sweden (1), Switzerland (1) and Britain (39).

The WHO has said that it currently has no plan to raise its pandemic alert level to phase 6, the highest level which means a global pandemic is underway.

To raise the alert level, there must be enough evidence to show that community-level human-to-human transmission of the new virus has occurred in regions outside North America, it said.

The WHO said, however, that it was closely monitoring the situation in European countries such as Spain and Britain, which have reported the largest numbers of cases outside North America.

U.S. has more than 2,500 H1N1 flu cases

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has 2,532 confirmed cases of the new H1N1 swine influenza in 44 states, and three deaths, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Sunday.

On Saturday, the CDC reported 2,254 confirmed cases, with 104 people in the hospital.

Washington state health officials said on Saturday a man in his 30s with underlying heart conditions succumbed to the virus last week. It was the first death in the state.

Although most cases appear to be mild, just as in seasonal flu the swine flu strain has killed, with 48 confirmed deaths in Mexico, three in the United States, one in Canada and one in Costa Rica.

It has moved into the southern hemisphere, where influenza season is just beginning, and could mix with circulating seasonal flu viruses or the H5N1 avian influenza virus to create new strains, health officials said.

(Reporting by World Desk Americas)

Seven further UK swine flu cases

Seven new swine flu cases in the UK have been confirmed, the Department of Health has said.

A spokeswoman said all the people diagnosed were in England, bringing the total in the UK to 55.

She added that the cases involved two adults and four children in London and an adult in the east of England.

"So far, all infections in the UK have been mild, and cases have been diagnosed and treated early," the spokeswoman said.

Laboratory investigation

A Health Protection Agency (HPA) spokeswoman said the adult in the east of England and one of the London adults had been in contact with individuals who had previously been confirmed with swine flu.

The other adult in London and all four children "were swabbed last week and may have acquired their infection before the closure of their school", she said.

She added that anti-viral drugs had been given to all children and staff as a precaution, and all symptomatic patients were recovering at home.

According to the HPA, a further 384 cases were under laboratory investigation as of 1500BST on Sunday.

Of the 55 cases in the UK, 50 have been confirmed in England and five in Scotland.

H1N1 flu tally 4,379 in 29 countries - W.H.O.

* 4,379 people infected with H1N1 flu in 29 countries

* Big increase in confirmed cases in United States

* First death reported in Costa Rica

ZURICH, May 10 (Reuters) - H1N1 flu has infected 4,379 people in 29 countries, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Sunday, increasing its count by almost a thousand in a day.

The WHO tally tends to lag national reports but is considered more definitive.

The U.N. agency said Mexico has reported 1,626 confirmed cases, up from 1,364 on Saturday, and repeated that 45 people have died there from the new flu strain that is a genetic mixture of swine, bird and human viruses.

The Mexican government has said the worst is over and eased restrictions on commercial and public activity in the country that has been at the epicentre of the outbreak.

The WHO's latest flu tally increased the number of confirmed infections in the United States to 2,254 from 1,639 reported on Saturday, while the number of reported deaths remained at two.

U.S. officials on Saturday said a man died from the new flu in Washington state last week, bringing the toll in the United States to three.

WHO increased the number of infections in Canada to 280, from 242, and repeated one person had died there.

It said one person had also died in Costa Rica, which had eight confirmed cases.

European countries with cases confirmed in WHO laboratories include Spain (93), Britain (39), Germany (11), Italy (9), France (12), Portugal (1), Ireland (1), Netherlands (3), Austria (1), Denmark (1), Sweden (1), Switzerland (1) and Poland (1).

The WHO also confirmed the following infections in the rest of the world: Israel (7), New Zealand (7), Brazil (6), Japan (4), Panama (3). South Korea (3), El Salvador (2), Hong Kong, China (1), Guatemala (1), Colombia (1) Argentina (1) and Australia (1).

Evidence that the disease, popularly known as swine flu, has taken hold in communities outside the Americas would prompt WHO Director-General Margaret Chan to declare a full pandemic.

Chan raised the global pandemic alert level last week to 5 out of 6 in response to the spread of H1N1 flu. Phase 5 means a pandemic is imminent.

The WHO also repeated its guidance that international travel should not be restricted as a result of the outbreak.

Swine Flu Is as Severe as 1957 Pandemic, Study Shows

May 12 (Bloomberg) -- The swine flu strain that has sickened people in 30 countries rivals the severity of the 1957 “Asian flu” pandemic that killed 2 million people, scientists said.

About four of 1,000 people infected with the new H1N1 strain in Mexico by late April died, according to a study published yesterday in the journal Science that was led by Neil Ferguson of the Imperial College London. Seasonal flu epidemics cause 250,000 to 500,000 deaths each year, the World Health Organization has said.

Scientists are trying to determine whether swine flu will mutate and become more deadly as it spreads to the Southern Hemisphere and back. The virus is more contagious than seasonal flu, the Geneva-based WHO said yesterday. A “moderate” pandemic like the 1957 Asian flu could kill 14.2 million people and shave 2 percent from the global economy in the first year, the World Bank said in October.

“While substantial uncertainty remains, clinical severity appears less than that seen in 1918 but comparable with that seen in 1957,” the Science study authors wrote.

Flu pandemics occur when a strain of the disease to which few people have immunity evolves and begins spreading. Pandemics usually occur two to three times a century, scientists have said. A worldwide outbreak as severe as the 1918 Spanish flu might cause 180 million to 360 million deaths, according to a 2005 study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The last pandemic hit in 1968, and health officials have been anticipating another since the H5N1 strain began spreading widely in birds in 2003.

World Spread

Swine flu has been confirmed in 4,694 people, according to the WHO, the health agency of the United Nations. Sixty-one people have died, including 56 in Mexico, three in the U.S., and one each in Canada and Costa Rica, health officials said. The U.S. confirmed 2,618 cases in 44 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva today confirmed the country’s first case of swine flu. Separately, former Cuban President Fidel Castro said a Mexican medical student in the island nation has the virus. The WHO’s latest tally doesn’t include these figures.

Each person infected with swine flu in Mexico in April gave it to 1.4 more people on average, the study said. While that’s in the lower range of transmission speed for a pandemic virus, it’s quicker than most seasonal flus, the authors said.

An estimated 23,000 people in Mexico were infected by late April, the researchers said. That number was based on case reports and assumptions about the speed of spread, and may have been as high as 32,000 and as low as 6,000, according to the study.

More Contagious

In seasonal flu, each person who comes in contact with someone who’s sick has a 5 percent to 15 percent probability of illness, according to a statement on the WHO’s Web site. In swine flu, the probability increases to 22 percent to 33 percent, WHO said.

Swine flu has been “overwhelmingly mild outside Mexico,” the WHO statement said. The reason for that variation “is still not fully understood,” it said.

Swine flu is making more young people seriously ill, compared with seasonal flu, and “is of particular concern” because it’s causing more significant medical effects in people with other health conditions, the WHO said.

40 new cases of swine flu in Canada: officials

OTTAWA (AFP) — Health officials in Canada on Monday confirmed 40 new cases of swine flu, bringing the total number across the country to 331.

Thirty-four of the new cases were found in Ontario, the nation's most populous province, which now has had a total of 110 cases since the start of the outbreak.

The remaining cases, most of them mild, are scattered around the vast country, including two new cases in Quebec and three in Alberta -- where the only Canadian death from the virus was confirmed by authorities last week.

Health officials reported that to date, there have been 79 swine flu cases in British Columbia, on the Pacific coast; 57 in Nova Scotia on the Atlantic coast; 52 in Alberta; 17 in Quebec; 10 in Saskatchewan; three on Prince Edward Island; two in New Brunswick and one in Manitoba.

Don't shoot the scientists

Simon Jenkins is right to say that obsessive media coverage of swine flu, ever thirsty for hyperbole and impatient for new developments, can be misleading (Sophie's sniffle mocks the peddlers of swine flu panic, 6 May). And advice issued by government should rightly be debated.

But the suggestion that scientists "depend on regular pandemic scares for government grants" is paranoid (we might as well say Jenkins invents contrary opinions in order to be paid by the Guardian). In his dismay at the lack of a pandemic he reminds me of a man playing Russian roulette who, after two squeezes of the trigger, declares: "Ha! This isn't dangerous after all!" The possibility of a pandemic is real but cannot yet be predicted with assurance.

Jenkins declares that "no medical authority ... has confined its reporting to the facts". Yet the majority of scientists have been cautious and measured on the subject. At the Science Media Centre we have spoken to dozens of scientists on the subject and I haven't yet found one who is clamouring to make more media appearances; these people are hardly underworked at the moment.

I am proud of our virologists, epidemiologists and microbiologists for giving up their time to explain complex and uncertain science. Imagine the alternative: scientists having secret meetings with ministers, and official statements issued from behind closed doors. The bad old days - now that would make me panic.

There is no excuse for hyping a story, but the source of that hype is not always plain. Here's an example: a senior virologist I know was asked by a journalist how many deaths might be expected if a full-scale pandemic were to take a global hold. He said the figure was impossible to predict with any accuracy, but between one and 50 million would be a reasonable estimate. "Fifty million could die, say scientists" was the next day's headline. Was the virologist wrong to make his statement? Absolutely not: it was scientifically valid and defensible. But after some editorial lopping it's no wonder Jenkins concludes that swine flu was greeted with "pandemonium".

Except that in the UK I don't see this pandemonium. I see people going to work, children going to school, and not a face mask in sight. Why? Because largely conscientious science journalism has ensured we have been well-informed. We get the science. We're not panicking.

"At last an expert speaks," Jenkins says of London schoolgirl Sophie de Salis describing her symptoms as mild. But such glee as scientists appear to be wrong is hollow schadenfreude. I don't hear any crowing that the flu pandemics of the past "might not have happened". They did; another one will; and it might start off looking very similar to this one.

Let's not forget that these pandemics are in living memory, and that the direction this infection will take remains unknown. And let's be cautious about how we get our news, remembering that media saturation and big headlines don't mean Armageddon. Which is why you might make a case for shooting the odd editor. But please, Simon, don't shoot any virologists; you never know when you might need one.

• Tom Sheldon is a biologist and spokesman for the Science Media Centre

Swine flu could affect third of world's population, says study

The swine flu virus will infect a third of the world's population if it continues to spread at its current rate, scientists warned today, as three more cases were confirmed in the UK.

In what the journal Science described as the "first quick and dirty analysis" of swine flu, a study by researchers at Imperial College London predicted the virus was likely to cause an epidemic in the northern hemisphere in the autumn.

One of the authors, the epidemiologist and disease modeller Neil Ferguson, who sits on the World Health Organisation's emergency committee for the outbreak, said the virus had "full pandemic potential".

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said: "It is likely to spread around the world in the next six to nine months, and when it does so, it will affect about one-third of the world's population.

"To put that into context, normal seasonal flu probably affects around 10% of the world's population every year, so we are heading for a flu season which is perhaps three times worse than usual – not allowing for whether this virus is more severe than normal seasonal flu viruses."

The Health Protection Agency announced three more confirmed cases of the virus in the UK, bringing the total to 68. The three patients – two children and one adult from London – all had close contact with previously confirmed cases.

Today's study estimated the contagiousness of the disease by analysing the number of people travelling to Mexico who became infected, and comparing that with a study of a Mexican village where the disease has spread. The research also examined how the virus was mutating.

It estimated that swine flu had killed between 0.4% and 1.4% of its victims in Mexico. The report's lead author, Christophe Fraser, said it was too early to predict what the death rate was likely to be outside Mexico. "My hunch is that the death rate will be lower elsewhere – Mexico has underlying issues with respiratory disease," he said.

The researchers said this H1N1 virus appeared to be about equal in severity to the flu of 1957, and less severe than the deadly 1918 version.

"At the moment the virus is not spreading fast in the northern hemisphere because we are outside the normal flu season, but come the autumn it is likely to cause a really major epidemic," Ferguson said.

He declined to put an estimate on the number of deaths that may occur. "We have some assessment, but the uncertainty is still quite broad," he said.

"We can say it is not going to be as catastrophic as the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, it is milder than that. But it is still possible it could be [like] 1957 – where about three to four out of 1,000 people who were infected died and overall about 3 million to 4 million people died that year because of the pandemic worldwide – or it could be even milder than that, like the 1968 pandemic which was barely worse than a normal seasonal flu year.

"I am not predicting three million to four million [deaths]. That was what happened in 1957. The world is a very different place today. There are more people in the world, but there is also a much better healthcare system. We have drugs and vaccines, particularly in developed countries, which should markedly reduce the burdens of the disease."

Ferguson said the findings of the study confirmed that decisions must be taken swiftly on vaccine production.

"One of the key decisions which has to be made this week by the world community is how much do we switch over current vaccine production for seasonal flu to make a vaccine against this particular virus."

Today Cuba and Thailand confirmed their first case of the virus. The patient in Cuba is a Mexican student at a medical school.

Fidel Castro accused Mexico of failing to disclose the spread of swine flu until after Barack Obama, the US president, had visited the country on 16 April. In a newspaper column, the former Cuban leader wrote: "Mexican authorities did not inform the world of the presence [of swine flu], while they waited for Obama's visit."

At least 61 people have been killed by swine flu around the world, and the WHO has confirmed about 4,800 cases.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Deadlier Strain Would Overwhelm Health Systems

Governments around the globe have moved swiftly and aggressively against the fast-spreading A/H1N1 flu virus. But should it evolve into an especially deadly strain, the consequences will likely overwhelm even the most advanced health systems in the U.S. and other Western countries.

By one important measure -- stockpiles of antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu -- the U.K. is among the countries best prepared to cope with the emerging pandemic. It has enough of the medicine on hand to treat 33 million people, or 54% of its population. France is also a leader, with drugs also to treat 54% of its people, as well as one billion surgical masks in its stockpile. Austria, with antivirals for 40%, and Japan, at 28%, are close behind.

India, which announced plans Thursday to purchase enough Tamiflu to treat nine million people, adding to its current stock of doses to treat one million, lags behind other nations. In Africa, which hasn't reported any confirmed cases of the new virus, the World Health Organization's regional office has about one million doses available to countries in need, according to Phillip Muthoka, who works in Kenya's health ministry. He has just 400 doses of Tamiflu now.

With scarce resources, a poorly organized health system, and a population battling other diseases, African nations would be especially vulnerable should a deadly strain of the virus take hold on that continent, officials say. "We are very concerned," Dr. Muthoka said. "Our people are traveling all over."

For its part, the U.S. has enough antiviral medication in reserve to treat 50 million people, or about 16% of the population. It has also poured some $7 billion into strengthening its public-health infrastructure since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the SARS and avian flu epidemics prompted concern about the ability of communities to respond to such events. Improved surveillance and detection efforts and better-trained local public-health agencies are among the payoffs.

Flu: Complete Coverage

View Map

Discuss

Vote: How worried are you about a flu pandemic? Join the discussion.

Audio Updates

Health and Human Services Sec. Kathleen Sebelius on coordinated efforts to prevent a pandemic.
Acting CDC director Dr. Richard Bresser on what is currently known about the outbreak.
The FDA's Dr. Josh Sharpstein details a new panel to respond to H1N1.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on vaccine efforts.

Timeline

View Interactive

"The response has been excellent," said Robert M. Pestronk, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officers in Washington. But Congress zeroed out federal allocations for pandemic-flu planning during the past two fiscal years, he said. The recession is wreaking havoc on state and local budgets, putting further pressure on state, county and municipal health authorities charged with managing surveillance, monitoring and response at the ground level of any epidemic. "The question is that under a full-scale epidemic, can [the response] be sustained?"

Indeed, if the strain ultimately turns very lethal and approaches, say, the scale of the Spanish flu outbreak that took about 40 million lives in 1918-19, it would be no match for even the most-prepared agencies and governments. Last year, congressional investigators at the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said a modern-day equivalent would hit about 90 million people in the U.S., with nearly 10 million requiring hospitalization. With fewer than one million hospital beds in the U.S., "a severe pandemic would far exceed the capacity of the U.S. hospitals," they concluded.

Another critical weapon, flu-vaccine development, remains hampered by 1950s production technology. It can take several months to develop a vaccine for a new virus, and much longer to produce and deliver it to enough people to have an impact.

"There really is limited vaccine-production capacity," said Michael T. Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. "We're very ill-prepared."

Meanwhile, governments and public-health officials on high alert around the world are using lessons learned from past outbreaks to mitigate the impact of the new virus. Singapore, in one of the stricter moves by a government to stop potential infection from travelers abroad, announced Thursday that people who have recently traveled to Mexico will be quarantined for seven days when they enter Singapore and undergo phone surveillance for symptoms of swine flu.

Japan has posted military doctors and nurses at Narita airport near Tokyo, using thermal-imaging cameras to screen passengers coming in on flights from Mexico, Canada and the U.S. If a case of the flu is reported, the government plans to open several hundred "fever clinics" across Japan.

To raise awareness of the flu's dangers, the French government has posted billboards in major airports warning passengers traveling to Mexico to avoid large crowds and to wash their hands regularly. The country also urged the European Union to suspend outward flights to Mexico, but the EU ruled out the idea on Thursday.

In Southern Africa, health ministers from countries who belong to the Southern African Development Community, a regional regulatory body that deals with trade, politics and other issues, put their countries' surveillance system on "high alert" and agreed on a travel advisory against visiting affected countries.

On Tuesday, an Air Tran jet arriving at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport from Cancun, Mexico, was detained on the tarmac while emergency medical workers boarded to examine two sick passengers. Federal officials tracking the A/H1N1 virus were contacted.

The passengers were diagnosed with gastric distress, frequent among visitors to Mexico, and the passengers disembarked and headed home. Had the men been suspected of having the flu, the plane could have been isolated away from the terminal until health officials determined how to help all the passengers. The other passengers likely would have been given health-alert notices on how to monitor fever and other symptoms at home, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would have tracked the health status of any passengers from the flight.

So far, the new flu strain appears mild. Adewale Troutman, director of the Metro Louisville Department of Health and Wellness in Kentucky, says it resembles the pattern of regular flu with "multiple cases and not that many hospitalizations." During two days of races at this weekend's Kentucky Derby, some 300,000 people will jam the track, he says. Additional hand-sanitizers may be deployed at the track as a precaution, he says, but other special measures aren't planned.

"The whole public-health system is much better prepared now than it was five to 10 years ago," said Jeffrey Koplan, director of the Global Health Institute at Emory University in Atlanta, and a former director of the CDC. Still, he said, "preparedness is a relative thing. Any system has constraints in capacity."

[Deadlier Strain Would Overwhelm Health Systems]

—Betsy McKay, Sarah Childress and Cam Simpson contributed to this article.

Swine flu goes person-to-pig; could it jump back?

MEXICO CITY – Now that the swine flu virus has passed from a farmworker to pigs, could it jump back to people? The question is important, because crossing species again could make it more deadly.

The never-before-seen virus was created when genes from pig, bird and human viruses mixed together inside a pig. Experts fear the virus that has gone from humans back into pigs in at least one case could mutate further before crossing back into humans again. But no one can predict what will happen.

"Could it gain virulence? Yes," Juan Lubroth, an animal health expert at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, said Sunday. "It could also become milder. It could go in both directions."

Canadian officials announced Saturday that the virus had infected about 200 pigs on a farm — the first evidence that it had jumped to another species. It was linked to a farmworker who recently returned from Mexico, where 19 people have died from the virus. The farmworker has recovered, and the mildly infected pigs have been quarantined.

Agriculture officials believe the worker may have sneezed or coughed near the pigs, possibly in a barn. About 10 percent of the herd experienced loss of appetite and fever, but all are recovering.

Experts say pork — even from infected pigs — is safe to eat.

Lubroth stressed that sick people should avoid contact with swine, but said healthy farmworkers don't need to take any extra precautions because the chance of catching flu from a pig is small.

Unlike the H5N1 bird flu virus, which infects the blood, organs and tissue of poultry, most swine flus are confined to the respiratory tract, meaning the risk of a human getting infected by a pig is "probably 10 or a 1,000 times less," Lubroth said.

But pigs are of special concern because they share some basic biological similarities with humans, and they have served as "mixing vessels" in which various flu strains have swapped genetic material. That's what happened to create the current swine flu strain.

Scientists are unsure when the virus leaped from pigs to humans — possibly months or even a year ago — but it was identified as a new strain about a week and a half ago. Since then, nearly 800 cases have been confirmed worldwide. The only death outside Mexico occurred when a Mexican toddler died in a Texas hospital.

There have been sporadic cases of pigs infecting humans with influenza in the past. Most cases resulted in mild symptoms, typically among people who were in close contact with sick pigs. A few deaths have been recorded, and limited human-to-human transmission also has been documented, but nothing sustained.

Dr. Tim Uyeki, an epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who has worked on SARS and bird flu outbreaks, said there may be more pig-to-human cases that have gone unnoticed because surveillance among swine populations tends to be weaker than among poultry stocks.

Given that the past three flu pandemics — the 1918 Spanish flu, the 1957-58 Asian flu and the Hong Kong flu of 1968-69 — were all linked to birds, much of the global pandemic preparedness has focused on avian flus.

"The world has been watching and preparing and trying to prevent a pandemic from an avian influenza reservoir," he said. "The focus has been on birds, and here is a virus that's coming from a swine reservoir. Now it's a human virus."

Reporter Tries to Get Tested for Swine Flu

It had been 10 years since I had the flu. But over the past week, I spent four days in isolation at New York's Montefiore Medical Center after contracting a serious case.

I came down with the virus after being stuck for hours at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, which sees more than two dozen flights a day from Mexico.

Forty-eight hours later I had muscle aches, a cough, chills and a 102-degree fever. Authorities only seemed to be giving advice not to "go out." But few doctors make house calls. Last Sunday night, as my condition worsened, I couldn't reach my ..

rest here..

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124138858052581321.html

Mexico says flu epidemic over the worst

* Mexico says H1N1 flu epidemic is past its peak

* Government looks to ease partial economic shutdown

* Experts say virus may be no more severe than normal flu

* WHO says world should not "lower guard" (Adds Calderon, health minister quotes, El Salvador cases)

By Louise Egan and Luis Rojas Mena

MEXICO CITY, May 3 (Reuters) - Mexico announced on Sunday its swine flu epidemic had passed the worst and experts said the new H1N1 virus might be no more severe than normal flu, although it could still have an impact on world health.

Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova showed journalists a graph indicating infections in Mexico, the epicenter of the H1N1 flu outbreak, had fallen sharply from a peak on April 24.

"The admittance of patients to hospitals has decreased and the health of patients in hospitals has improved," he told a news conference.

Laboratory tests have shown 590 firm cases of the virus so far in Mexico, out of which 22 people were confirmed to have died. This was more than the 19 confirmed deaths previously announced but Cordova said the tests were simply clarifying a backlog of suspected cases.

But new cases of the virus, which mixes swine, avian and human flu strains, still were being tracked across the world, keeping up fears of a pandemic.

The World Health Organization said its laboratories had identified a total of 898 H1N1 flu infections in 18 countries, including one case in Italy. Its toll lags national reports but is considered more scientifically secure. [nL3260192]

Separately, El Salvador reported its first two confirmed cases of the flu.

The WHO urged governments around the world not to lower their guard and to cooperate to prevent the flu spreading.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon rejected complaints at home that his government overreacted by shutting down public life for five days to prevent infection.

"This is a totally new virus in the world," Calderon told Mexican television. "We acted decisively, energetically and properly."

After days of alarm that had kept streets eerily quiet, Mexico City appeared more relaxed on Sunday, with some people venturing out on bikes or running. Many no longer wore the surgical masks that have been almost obligatory in the city in the last week as residents feared infection.

"ENCOURAGING SIGNS"

In the United States, the flu has spread to 30 states and infected 226 people, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. It seems to be hitting mostly younger people, with very few cases in those over 50 years old. [nN03327731]

CDC acting director Richard Besser said there were "encouraging signs" the new strain was not more severe than what would be seen during normal seasonal flu.

But he still expected the virus to have a "significant impact" on people's health. "We're not out of the woods," Besser told "Fox News Sunday." [nN03498213]

The U.S. government said it hoped to have a vaccine ready for the new flu strain by the autumn.

Health officials and scientists from around the world have been focusing on how the new mutated flu strain may be passed between animals and humans.

The WHO said flu surveillance should be increased in both humans and animals now that the latest H1N1 strain was found to have infected pigs in Canada. [nL3279981]

Mexico has seen a stabilization of serious cases in the past few days, bringing some relief to millions of people who have stayed indoors in line with a government order for non-essential businesses to remain closed through Wednesday.

"We've been indoors since Friday. So now we've come out to enjoy some fresh air," cyclist Silvia Rodriguez told Reuters, relaxing on the grass of a central park in Mexico City.

Others were more wary.

"I'm not totally convinced that the worst is over," said Juan Antonio Hernandez, 48, a caretaker.

A Mexican Embassy official in China said Chinese authorities were quarantining more than 50 Mexican business people and tourists after some showed flu symptoms. [nPEK8030]

China denied Mexican complaints that discrimination lay behind the measures.

Asia's trade and tourism could be hit by the latest flu outbreak but lessons learned from the SARS epidemic in 2003 would boost efforts to counter the effects. SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, killed more than 800 people around the world in 2003 after first appearing in southern China. (Additional reporting by Maggie Fox in Washington, Daniel Trotta, Anahi Rama, Jason Lange, Louise Egan, Pascal Fletcher and Esteban Israel in Mexico City, Tan Ee Lyn in Hong Kong, Laura MacInnis in Geneva; editing by John O'Callaghan)

MA Confirms 7 More A/H1N1 Cases

BOSTON—State health officials say they've confirmed seven new cases of swine flu in Massachusetts, bringing the total number of cases in the state to 88.

One of the newly confirmed cases required hospitalization, but the person has since been discharged.

All of the new cases are expected to fully recover.

The new total removes two cases that were previously counted in Massachusetts, but are now being counted in Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Since there's no vaccine for swine flu, officials continue to urge residents to take simple preventative steps, such as frequent hand washing and staying home from work if you are sick.

Swine H1N1 Fatality in Washington

The Snohomish County man, who officials said was in his 30s, had an underlying heart condition. He became sick on April 30 and died Wednesday from what appears to be complications of swine-origin influenza (H1N1), officials with the state Department of Health said.

The above comments describe the first reported H1N1 swine influenza death in Washington state. The death follows two deaths in Texas and one in Canada. These deaths highlight concerns that H1N1 deaths in the United States will parallel the deaths in Mexico when the number of cases increase.

The virus is rapidly spreading in the United States (see updated map), but the vast majority of reported cases are in children or young adults and most of these cases have been mild and did not require hospitalization. However, as the number of deaths in the United States increase, the similarities with Mexico will become clearer.

These similarities are most easily seen in the sequences of the swine H1N1 from patients in Mexico and the United States (see list here), which are virtually identical. Moreover the same sequences had been identified in isolates worldwide, strongly suggesting that differences in mortality are largely due to testing and detection frequencies.

The H1N1 in Mexico was recently confirmed by labs in the United States and Canada. Prior to the lab confirmation, the reports out of Mexico were mixed. It was clear that patients between the ages of 25-44 were dying from atypical pneumonia, but the etiological agent was unclear. The identification of swine H1N1 that matches the virus circumnavigating the globe provides a tight association between prior events in Mexico and future events in countries with more recent introductions.

However, the timing of these introductions remains uncertain. The mild nature of the vast majority of case allows for silent spread. The first two cases in the United States were identified through a border surveillance system. Other infections would go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed because of similarities with seasonal flu. Most infected patients would not seek medical attention, and those that did would be positive for influenza A and treated as seasonal flu patients.

This silent spread will likely continue because of decisions to limit testing of patients by state labs. Many have indicated that they will concentrate on more severe cases. Although an influenza A positive at this time of the year in the northern hemisphere will be increasingly likely to be H1N1 swine flu, a lab confirmation is the best tracking data.

The deaths of the young adults in Texas and Washington highlights the similarities between the H1N1 swine flu pandemic of 2009 and the 1918 outbreak, which also began with mild influenza due to efficient swine H1N1 transmission in a human population.

The rapid spread in the human population increases the likelihood of co-infrection with H1N1 seasonal flu and the acquisition of key polymorphisms linked to adaptation in human hosts. Two likely acquisitions are NA H274Y and PB2 E627K, which are fixed in human H1N1.

Close monitoring of sequences, including those from the southern hemisphere in the near term, will allow for detection of key changes that will drive swine H1N1 infections in the northern hemisphere in the fall.
The key acquisitions were recently demonstrated in the fixing of oseltamivir (Tamiflu) fixing in H1N1 seasonal flu, and acquisition of key polymorphisms via homologous recombination remains a cause for concern.

NIAID Lab Attacks Flu From Different Directions

Jeffery K. Taubenberger, M.D., Ph.D., a senior investigator in the Respiratory Viruses Section of the NIAID Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, is a world-renowned expert on influenza viruses, particularly the strain that caused the infamous 1918 flu pandemic. Today, his laboratory at NIAID studies a number of viruses, including influenza A viruses (IAVs), which are the pathogens that cause yearly flu epidemics and have caused periodic pandemics, such as the 1968 outbreak that killed an estimated one million people.

Negative-stained transmission electron micrograph depicting the structural details of an influenza virus particle.

This negative-stained transmission electron micrograph depicts the structural details of an influenza virus particle. Influenza A and B are the two types of influenza viruses that cause epidemic human disease.
Credit: CDC/ Dr. Erskine. L. Palmer; Dr. M. L. Martin

Dr. Taubenberger’s research aims to inform public health strategies on several important aspects of flu: seasonal flu; avian flu, which circulates among birds and has infected humans in the past; swine flu, which circulates among pigs and has infected humans in the past; and pandemic flu, which can arise from numerous sources and spread quickly because humans have little to no immunity to it.

Responding to New Viruses

The emergence of 2009 H1N1 influenza made international headlines as it affected mostly young people in Mexico, the United States, and other parts of the world.

Dr. Taubenberger’s lab is currently studying the 2009 H1N1 flu virus to understand how this strain emerged and to try to identify factors that allow it to spread and cause disease in humans. It is investigating models of how this new virus infects the respiratory tract of animal models and what allows the virus to be transmitted. Additionally, Dr. Taubenberger and his colleagues will be evaluating how exposure to prior strains of flu may contribute to the immune response to this 2009 H1N1 virus.

Taking on Seasonal Flu

Seasonal flu affects most of the general population at some point in their lives. Its incidence increases at regular, expected times during the winter months. These epidemics are estimated by the World Health Organization to cause between 250,000 and 500,000 deaths worldwide each year.

In a recent analysis, Dr. Taubenberger and several co-authors examined 1,302 complete IAV genomes. Their results showed that virus strains do not persist from one flu season to the next; rather, new strains of flu arise each year. Understanding how IAV evolves is central to its surveillance and control. With this study, Dr. Taubenberger and his collaborators have contributed information that could allow public health officials to determine more quickly and accurately which strains of flu to include in the annual vaccine.

For more information, read Study Provides New Understanding of Forces Behind Seasonal Flu Virus Evolution.

Studying Avian Flu

IAVs in humans are thought to be ultimately derived from avian influenza viruses. Dr. Taubenberger and collaborators were able to determine the complete genomic sequences of 167 wild bird IAVs and, based on their observations, proposed that IAVs in wild birds form transient “genome constellations.” These constellations continually reshuffle, making it difficult to predict what prevention methods will work on which strains. Understanding the ecology and evolution of avian IAV is important for pandemic preparedness and to understand how these viruses might adapt to humans.

Researching Swine Flu

IAVs also infect pigs around the world, and different strains of flu viruses have circulated in pigs at least since 1918. Pigs can be infected with flu viruses adapted to pigs, humans, and birds, so they have been called a “mixing vessel” for flu viruses.

Dr. Taubenberger and his collaborators have been studying swine flu in the laboratory and recently published a study of the evolution of different strains of swine flu since 1918. These studies are shedding light on how flu viruses adapt to pigs. His lab is also actively involved in studies evaluating how different swine influenza viruses cause disease in various animal models.

Preparing for a Pandemic

Pandemic flu has led to tremendous loss of life. For example, the 1918 pandemic resulted in the deaths of 40 to 50 million people worldwide. Modern vaccines and health preparations have usually been able to stay ahead of new flu viruses in recent years; however, new pandemic IAVs are an ever-present threat. To prepare for a pandemic, understanding the how’s and why’s of past pandemics is essential.

Dr. Taubenberger, and other co-authors from NIAID, developed a comprehensive analysis of victims of the 1918 pandemic. In addition to studying actual tissue samples from 58 U.S. soldiers who died of influenza between 1918 and 1919, the co-authors identified and reviewed 118 contemporary autopsy series reports on victims of the pandemic, comprising 8,398 individual autopsies conducted in 15 countries. Their results showed that the primary cause of death among the victims was not the influenza virus but rather bacterial pneumonia. Flu weakened the victim’s immune system, allowing the bacteria to invade and kill. This realization promises to make preparations for diagnosing, treating, and preventing bacterial pneumonia a major component of planning efforts for a future pandemic.

Plenty of flu caution as Mexico returns to work

MEXICO CITY — In gleaming office towers and gritty markets, Mexicans returned to work Wednesday after a five-day swine flu shutdown, and dozens returned to a heroes' welcome from "humiliating" quarantines in China. But Mexico's death toll rose, feeding fears of more infections now that crowds are gathering again.

The World Health Organization urged countries not to quarantine visitors or impose trade restrictions without scientific reasons. But China defiantly justified its quarantines as protection for its densely populated cities. Even impoverished Haiti turned away a Mexican ship carrying desperately needed food aid because of flu fears.

In Mexico City, friends and co-workers greeted each other with back slaps, firm handshakes — and dollops of hand sanitizer. Some high-rises stationed doctors in their lobbies who questioned returning employees and required visitors to fill out forms stating they had no flu symptoms. Maitre d's in surgical masks stood at attention amid rows of sidewalk tables that were pulled out and washed down for the first time in days.

The city's health secretary late Wednesday announced that all businesses — including sports arenas, dance halls, movie theaters and all restaurants — will be allowed to operate today. But Armando Ahued said businesses must screen for ill people and make surgical masks mandatory for employees and customers.

"We're returning to normal," said Eugenio

Velis, 57, a graphic artist sipping coffee with friends in the trendy Condesa neighborhood.

But Ernesto Viloria, 40, worried about his children using public transit and returning to school.

"Nothing can be the same," insisted Viloria, who works in finance. "The virus continues, even though it's declining, and we have to pay attention."

The confirmed death toll in Mexico reached 42 on Wednesday — mostly as backlogged cases got tested, but also two new deaths were reported .

Flu overhyped? Some say officials 'cried swine'

CHICAGO — Did government health officials "cry swine" when they sounded the alarm on what looked like a threatening new flu?

The so-far mild swine flu outbreak has many people saying all the talk about a devastating global epidemic was just fear-mongering hype. But that's not how public health officials see it, calling complacency the thing that keeps them up at night.

The World Health Organization added a scary-sounding warning Thursday, predicting up to 2 billion people could catch the new flu if the outbreak turns into a global epidemic.

Many blame such alarms and the media coverage for creating an overreaction.

Schools shut down, idling healthy kids and forcing parents to stay home from work; colleges scaled back or even canceled graduation ceremonies; a Cinco de Mayo celebration in Chicago was canned; face masks and hand sanitizers sold out — all because of an outbreak that seems no worse than a mild flu season.

"I don't know anyone who has it. I haven't met anyone who knows anyone who contracted it," said Carl Shepherd, a suburban Chicago video producer and father of two. "It's really frightening more people than it should have. It's like crying wolf."

Two weeks after news broke about the new flu strain, there have been 46 deaths — 44 in Mexico and two in the United States. More than 2,300 are sick in 24 countries, including more than 800 U.S. cases. Those are much lower numbers than were

feared at the start based on early reports of an aggressive and deadly flu in Mexico.

Miranda Smith, whose graduation ceremony at Cisco Junior College in central Texas was canceled to avoid spreading the flu, blames the media.

"It's been totally overblown," she said Thursday.

"Everyone seems to know it's not going to kill you and it's not as deadly as they think," she said. "Everybody needs to just calm down and chill out."

Public health authorities acknowledge their worst fears about the new virus have not materialized. But no one's officially saying it's time to relax. Experts worry that people will become too complacent and tune out the warnings if the virus returns in a more dangerous form in the fall.

"People are taking a sigh of relief too soon," said Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Wednesday, Besser said the outbreak in the United States appears to be less severe than was first feared. But the virus is still spreading and its future potential as a killer is not clearly understood.

ReprintPrint Email Font Resize Swine-flu outbreak tests public health care plans in Santa Clara County

The BlackBerrys started buzzing with emergency alerts. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told all public health officers to join a conference call on the rapidly spreading swine flu.

"Uh, oh," Dr. Marty Fenstersheib, Santa Clara County's health officer, said to his three deputies sitting across the table. "This may be worse than we thought."

In the weeks that followed, local public health officials swung into action, launching their new pandemic plan, the one designed to protect county residents during a major health crisis. Now, with the virus still spreading but never evolving into the global killer health officials first feared, they are catching their breath and looking back on the real-life test to ask: Did it work?

The answer: For the most part, yes. Schools were closed, fears assuaged, common-sense health tips dispensed and officials identified 24 people as of Friday who have, or likely have, swine flu. But they are also considering the shortcomings: Antiviral medications were hard to find, critical Web sites crashed, labs were so overwhelmed that hundreds of samples still remain untested. The lessons point to how the system must be strengthened before the next crisis, which could come as soon as this fall if a deadlier version of swine flu returns.

'Patient zero'

As Fenstersheib began activating his emergency plan April 24, a 16-year-old girl from Branham High School in San

Jose spent the day in bed with a fever and cough.

By Tuesday, she was "patient zero," the first known case of swine flu in the county. And that night, county health officials shut down Branham for a week. Officials thought closing schools would limit the spread of the virus; ultimately, more than 700 schools across the nation would close.

While students stayed away, a problem emerged at patient zero's house. The antiviral Tamiflu, which would have eased the girl's symptoms and slowed the reproduction of the virus, proved elusive. The girl's parents and the doctor's office called several pharmacies before her father drove to East San Jose to pick up enough doses for the entire family.

Despite the county's own patient zero having trouble finding medication, Fenstersheib insisted that the people who needed it the most got it. The county acquired its share of California's stockpile five days after the CDC's alarm, and Fenstersheib said local hospitals and large clinics — where the sickest people would congregate — were well-stocked. He said the run on Tamiflu came mostly from people worried about getting swine flu, not those who had it — and he didn't want people needlessly depleting the limited drug supply.

Debra Bede of San Jose saw the decisions another way. "My daughter suffered needlessly," said Bede, who waited four days for a pharmacy to fill a Tamiflu prescription after a doctor told her 19-year-old she almost certainly had swine flu.

'Lack of supplies'

The state Department of Public Health said periodic supply breakdowns caused shortages not only of antiviral drugs, but also surgical masks, N95 respirators and chemicals and swabs needed for testing. "That has been a real surprise to everyone," said Dr. Bonnie Sorenson, the department's chief deputy director. "We have the energy and the knowledge, but we've been held back by the lack of supplies."

Sometimes, even the knowledge wasn't widely shared in the health care system. On Day One of the crisis, Zoey North of San Jose couldn't get her husband with severe flu symptoms tested after returning from a Mexican vacation. "Do you know anything about swine flu?'' North said she asked the Kaiser Permanente triage employee who answered the hot line. "She said, 'Yes, I just had it last week.' ''

North winced.

Rumors spread

Officials worked hard to get vital information out. Fenstersheib regularly stood before a phalanx of cameras, giving out the latest on new cases and school closures. But the day after Branham closed, as parents went online looking for more information, the county health Web site went dark for about 24 hours. Instead, students went to their Facebook and MySpace pages and spread false rumors about who was infected and which schools were closing next.

Even the county health department letter, which was posted on the high school's Web site, didn't answer some key questions. The letter highlighted the closing, but didn't specify that kids weren't supposed to congregate so they wouldn't spread any viruses among each other.

"The school said that's not our responsibility. They just went by the official notice: We'll see you in a week," said Branham parent Erik Levine. "You have families and students doing different things. Some are not doing outside activities. But others were going to movies and parks."

Rhonda Farber, superintendent of the Campbell Union High School District, did not return repeated phone calls from the Mercury News to discuss the problem. Other schools, like Ruskin Elementary in San Jose and Daves Avenue Elementary in Monte Sereno, kept families better informed, with daily updates.

Even state schools Superintendent Jack O'Connell had a hard time assessing the extent of the crisis: To his chagrin, he discovered there is no statewide tracking system detailing how many schools in the state were closed. Instead, his staff frequently had to call all 58 county education offices to get updated counts. "And even some of them didn't know," he said.

Joy Alexiou, who led the health department's communication efforts during the crisis, says the county needs to make better use of Web-based technology such as RSS feeds and Twitter. The department also has a project under way with Stanford University and Google that will allow its Web site to have virtually unlimited bandwidth.

Testing delays

As the number of people with fever, body aches and bad coughs filed into emergency rooms, Santa Clara County soon found it didn't have enough lab equipment to process the burgeoning number of samples. The delay often meant that people weren't getting their Tamiflu during the critical first 48 hours after symptoms appeared, when the drug is most effective. The delay also meant that officials couldn't quickly identify sick people and keep them out of school while still infectious.

So Fenstersheib's staff bought a second LightCycler machine to help process the tests. Still, as of Friday roughly 800 samples remained untested.

Health funding

The testing delays exposed a deeper problem — the lack of funding for public health.

In recent years, public health budgets and staffs have been trimmed. And about half of the baby boomers who went into public health decades ago are expected to soon retire, said Dr. Marc Schenker, a public health professor at the University of California-Davis School of Medicine.

"We chronically underfund our public health institutions," Schenker said. "Then suddenly something like this happens and everyone wants instant, effective lab testing."

Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, applauded the public health response overall but said the breakdown in getting medication quickly and the occasional communication failures underscore the need for better coordination among those executing the multitude of pandemic plans nationwide.

"They need to be in sync," he said. "And unfortunately the CDC doesn't have an ability to yank everyone on the same page."

No one is glad swine flu came, but Santa Clara County's Alexiou said it did let the local health department put its pandemic plan to the test: "The fact that it was a mild flu will give us time to make sure everything we want — well, most things that we want — are in place next time."

Seal U.S.-Mexico Border to Prevent Spread of Swine Flu, Says Democratic Homeland Security Committee Member

Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.), Homeland Security Committee member, who has called for closing U.S.-Mexico border to address swine flu problem.

(CNSNews.com) – Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.), member of the House Homeland Security Committee, is calling for the “immediate” and “complete” closure of the U.S. border with Mexico until officials in that country can contain the spread of the H1N1 virus, or swine flu.

“The public needs to be aware of the serious threat of swine flu, and we need to close our borders to Mexico immediately and completely until this is resolved,” Massa said in a statement posted on his congressional Web site. “The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) and the WHO (World Health Organization) are monitoring this situation closely and I call on all Americans to pay attention and follow their instructions as this situation develops. I have complete faith in our medical professionals and look forward to a swift conclusion to this problem.”

Massa criticized the media for its coverage of the outbreak, which led to U.S. officials declaring it a public health emergency on Sunday.

“I am making this announcement because I see this as a serious threat to the health of the American public and I do not believe this issue is receiving the attention it needs to have in the news,” Massa said.

At a press conference at the White House on Sunday, Dr. Richard Besser, acting chief at the CDC, predicted the spread of the disease in the United States.

“As we continue to look for cases, we are going to see a broader spectrum of disease,” Besser said. "We're going to see more severe disease in this country.”

But Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said the U.S. reaction to the virus was routine and that Americans should see it as a "declaration of emergency preparedness."

The CDC has identified the strain as type H1N1, a combination of genetic material from pigs, birds and humans. There is currently no vaccine for the new strain, but the WHO reports that initial findings indicate it responds to the antiviral medication Tamiflu.

The influenza death toll in Mexico has risen to 103, the government announced late Sunday, although they have yet to be confirmed as having resulted specifically from the H1N1 strain.

Massa’s statement said nothing about the U.S. northern border, despite six confirmed cases of swine flu in Canada, according to the Canadian Press, or the possibility that people infected with swine flu can enter the U.S. on planes or aboard boats and ships.

CNSNews.com International Editor Patrick Goodenough contributed to this report.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Flu Cases Rise in U.S.; Mexico Reports More Deaths

WASHINGTON -- Federal health officials said Wednesday they remain concerned about the new H1N1 influenza strain despite lifting a recommendation that schools and daycares close if they have students or staff with H1N1 flu.

Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the majority of H1N1 cases are in young people and that officials are starting to see some severe cases among the hundreds of mostly mild ones seen to date.