H1N1 influenza virus prevalent in domestic animals in Africa

UCLA life scientists and their colleagues have discovered the first evidence of the H1N1 virus in animals in Africa. In one village in northern Cameroon, a staggering 89 percent of the pigs studied had been exposed to the H1N1 virus, commonly known as the swine flu.

“I was amazed that virtually every pig in this village was exposed,” said Thomas B. Smith, director of UCLA’s Center for Tropical Research and the senior author of the research.

“Africa is ground zero for a new pandemic. Many people are in poor health there, and disease can spread very rapidly without authorities knowing about it.”

H1N1 triggered a human pandemic in the spring of 2009, infecting people in more than 200 countries. In the U.S., it led to an estimated 60 million illnesses, 270,000 hospitalizations and 12,500 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

The virus, known scientifically as Influenza A (H1N1), is made up of genetic elements of swine, avian and human influenza viruses. The pigs in Cameroon, the researchers say, were infected by humans.

“The pigs were running wild in that area,” said lead author Kevin Njabo, a researcher in UCLA’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology and associate director of the Center for Tropical Research. “I was shocked when we found out it was H1N1. Any virus in any part of the world can reach another continent within days by air travel. We need to understand where viruses originate and how they spread, so we can destroy a deadly virus before it spreads. We have to be prepared for a pandemic, but so many countries are not well-prepared — not even the United States.”

Njabo and his colleagues randomly collected nasal swabs and blood samples from domestic pigs that were part of 11 herds in villages and farms in Cameroon in 2009 and 2010. The results are published in the current issue of Veterinary Microbiology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal specializing in microbial animal diseases.

Nasal swabs can detect a current infection, and blood samples reveal past exposure to a virus. Because an active infection lasts only about five days, “we have to be lucky to get an active infection in the field, but evidence of the infection stays in the blood.”

In the village in northern Cameroon, Njabo found two pigs with active H1N1 infections, and virtually every other pig had evidence of a past infection in its blood.

“The pigs got H1N1 from humans,” Njabo said. “The fact that pigs in Africa are infected with the H1N1 flu virus illustrates the remarkable interconnectedness of the modern world with respect to diseases. The H1N1 virus that we found in livestock in Cameroon is virtually identical to a virus found in people in San Diego just a year earlier, providing an astonishing example of how quickly the flu can spread all over the globe.

“The discovery of H1N1 in African swine is also important because it shows how farming practices can trigger disease outbreaks and suggests opportunities for improving human and livestock health. Our studies indicate that H1N1 infections are more common in swine that wander freely in villages than in animals that are confined to farms.”

The biologists used a diagnostic test called ELISA — enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay — to test for potential viruses. ELISA revealed the pigs had the human strain of H1N1.

H5N1: Chickens engineered to be bird flu decoys

Scientists have engineered chickens that block the spread of avian influenza viruses.

These chickens – which are not intended for human consumption – still got the flu and died, but they didn’t pass the virus on to the healthy chickens they lived with.

These genetically modified chickens (pictured) could one day thwart outbreaks of a global threat to poultry production and human health that has caused the destruction of hundreds of millions of birds and the death of 306 people. But whether these chickens will be safe to eat is yet to be determined.

“Chickens are potential bridging hosts that can enable new strains of flu to be transmitted to humans,” says lead investigator Laurence Tiley of University of Cambridge. “Preventing virus transmission in chickens should reduce the economic impact of the disease and reduce the risk posed to people exposed to the infected birds.”

In this new study, chicken cells produced an RNA ‘decoy’ that resembles the viral genome. It binds to an important part of the virus, preventing its spread.

In particular, the researchers introduced a new gene into these chickens that produces a small molecule that mimics a vital enzyme of the H5N1 flu virus. The decoy tricks the virus’s production machinery into recognizing the decoy instead of the virus’s genome. This makes the enzyme useless, interfering with the replication of the virus.

And none of their cagemates – engineered or not – caught the flu. That means that only one or a few chickens would become infected if the virus entered a flock.

This strategy of developing chickens genetically resistant to infection has advantages over vaccinating the birds. Vaccination, the authors say, still allows the virus to circulate undetected through flocks of chickens, possibly mutating and developing resistance.

It costs approximately $79,000 to produce “a small number of stable transgenic birds you can characterize and breed from,” says study author Helen Sang of University of Edinburgh.

A truly disease-resistant bird wouldn’t be available any time soon, but the chicken method could help develop flu-fighting pigs, ducks, quail and turkeys.

Science reports:

Transgenic chickens could theoretically replace nontransgenic breeds worldwide in a few years, says Michael Greger, director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society of the US. That’s because the trade in both broiler and egglaying chickens has become consolidated in a handful of companies, which essentially determine what stocks are used by chicken farmers worldwide.

It would inevitably be more expensive, not to mention that these companies don’t sell to the vast number of people in the developing world who have a small flock in their backyard or on their rooftop – and that’s where avian influenza has been the most difficult to control [Science].

The study was published in Science last week and was partly funded by Cobb-Vantress, a major international chicken-breeding company.

Image by Norrie Russell, courtesy of Valerie White and The Roslin Institute

H5N1 Avian Flu: Labs Producing Virulent Flu Strains

Engineered hybrids of H5N1 bird and H1N1 human flu strains have proven virulent in mice, raising the danger that a natural recombination would be deadly to humans.

For years, researchers have worried that H5N1 avian influenza would mix with human flu viruses, evolving into a form that keeps its current lethality but is far more contagious.

That hasn’t happened in the wild yet but the latest findings, published Feb. 22 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show how easily it can happen.

“Fortunately, the H5N1 viruses still lack the ability to transmit efficiently among humans.” However, the virus may soon be overcome this obstacle when it mixes with human flu strains. These are the findings of researchers led by University of Wisconsin virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka. “The next pandemic is inevitable and it will be more devastating than the last.”

Current strains of H5N1 have infected 478 people since 2003, and killed 286 of them. It’s has difficulty transmitting to humans. It requires close contact and exposure to an infected person, bird or animal.

In birds, however, H5N1 is far more contagious, and here the virus has killed tens of millions of fowl. Fortunately, cases have been concentrated in Africa and Eurasia, but as the swine flu pandemic demonstrated, any flu contagious to humans will quickly spread on a global scale. This is mainly thanks to air travel and the free movement of peoples across state boundaries.

Influenza viruses mutate and swap genes easily, with co-infections turning animals into mobile petri dishes. In 2008, hoping to learn more about how H5N1 might evolve, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention combined it with a common human flu strain.

The researchers engineered all 254 possible variants of hybridisation between the deadly H5N1 avian flu strain found in Borneo, and a, H1N1 human flu virus from Tokyo. They identified three strains that were both contagious and deadly, in mice.

A flu virus that kills mice won’t necessarily kill humans, but the results are very disturbing. All three killer hybrid strains possessed a protein taken from the human strain. Called PB2, the protein appeared to help the virus survive in the mice’s upper respiratory tract. As of now, bird flu stays in the lower respiratory tract, where it’s less likely to be casually transmitted.

Although the recent H1N1 pandemic has not proved to be as lethal as originally feared, it certainly exposed how unprepared the world is for new influenza strains. At the same time it also exposed the ability of pharmaceutical companies to frighten the WHO, governments and politicians into spending $Millions to stockpile ineffective vaccines.

In May, Hong Kong University virologist Yi Guan, best known for finding the animal origin of SARS, was asked by Science Insider about the possibility of H5N1 and swine flu mixing.

“If that happens, I will retire immediately and lock myself in a sealed laboratory", said Guan. "But, historically the Chinese mainland would be the most likely source of such a virus."

"Unfortunately, in such a situation, the imposed cover-up by local authorities would mean that the virus will have spread with a high rate of cross-infection and will have escaped globally, even before we are alerted to it's existance. We will not be alerted until it has spread to the Western world and many people have become infected and died."

H1N1 Pandemic Flu and Ineffectiveness of Tamiflu

If the behaviour of the seasonal form of the H1N1 influenza virus is any indication, scientists say that chances are good that most strains of the pandemic H1N1 flu virus are resistant to Tamiflu, the main drug stockpiled for use against it.

Many researchers, including the Ohio State University, have traced the evolutionary history of the seasonal H1N1 influenza virus, which first infected humans during the 1918 pandemic. It is one of three seasonal influenza A viruses that commonly infect humans. The others are H1N2 and H3N2.

Within H1N1, two strains of virus circulate in humans: a seasonal form and the pandemic form of influenza known as swine flu, which has recently sickened millions and killed hundreds of people since it first emerged in North America last spring.

Over time and in line with normal virus behaviour, the H1N1 strain of seasonal influenza develops mutations that have caused it to become resistant to oseltamivir-based agents. Tamiflu is one of these oseltamivir phosphate.

It is a safe bet that whatever pressure is in the environment, excessive use of Tamiflu or something similar, driving seasonal influenza to become resistant to treatment, is also going to apply to pandemic influenza. It is happening already.

Tamiflu was never the long term solution nor was it as effective as it was claimed to be. The world awaits a more effective and better product to replace it.

H1N1: WHO uncertain whether the Pandemic is over of just Beginning

Senior World Health Organisation official Keiji Fukuda said Thursday that it was too early to declare the swine flu pandemic over, as it continues at "high levels" in parts of Europe and central Asia.

Although the A(H1N1) flu virus is peaking and even declining in parts of the northern hemisphere, and is hardly present in the south, Fukuda said there was an unproven possibility that there could be another wave later in the winter.

"It really probably remains too early to call the pandemic over," Fukuda said in a weekly telephone news conference.

Fukuda, Special Adviser to the WHO Director-General on Pandemic Influenza, said flu "activity continues at quite high levels in several different countries" notably the Czech Republic, France, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Switzerland.

Fukuda also noted that the signs of a peak and a decline in the caseload in North America and parts of Europe had occurred "extraordinarily early for influenza," with several months of the winter left.

As a result, the WHO could not rule out the possibility of another wave of illness in late winter or early spring.

"We simply are unable to answer this question right now. We continue to assess, right now we cannot predict whether we will see another upsurge in activity in the earlier parts of 2010," Fukuda said.

H1N1: Thailand Reports First Human-to-Pigs Transmission of Swine Flu

Thailand confirmed Thursday its first case of a pig infected with swine flu spread from humans, senior officials said.

Agriculture minister Thira Wongsamut said that one of 80 pigs in a sample group tested for the virus at Kasertsart University farm in the central province of Sara Buri had contracted A(H1N1) influenza.

"It was only in one sample that we found the A(H1N1)," Thira said.

The ministry has quarantined a five kilometre-radius around the farm, where university research is carried out, as a precautionary measure, he said, adding that new helth checks would be conducted at the farm every three days.

The ministry's permanent secretary Yukol Limlamthong said that none of the 132 workers at the university farm had contracted swine flu. He could not confirm if a research student had brought the virus in.

"We can not prove that, but the test results show the pigs contracted the virus from a human," Yukol said.

Thira said that eating pork did not pose a danger.

"The virus spread from human to pigs, as in several countries. We've had no case of it spreading from pigs to humans," he said.

Since the swine flu outbreak began in April, the ministry said it has tested more than 26,000 pigs for the virus.

It has confirmed 29,741 human cases of the flu and 190 of those were fatal.

The Thai government has a one-million dollar fund set aside to combat swine flu.

H1N1: North Korea finally confirms pandemic swine flu outbreak

Finally, North Korea announced for the first time that it has several cases of swine flu, confirming overseas reports of an outbreak in the secretive and impoverished communist state.

The health ministry has reported a total of nine cases of (A)H1N1 in the capital Pyongyang and the city of Sinuiju on the Chinese border, the official Korean Central News Agency said.

Authorities put a quarantine system in place and centres have been set up nationwide to check for new cases, it said.

The World Health Organisation is working with Pyongyang to help stem the outbreak and assess the scope of infections, WHO spokeswoman Aphaluck Bhatiasevi told South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

"We are working closely with the government to see what is required and if they need any assistance from WHO," she said.

Yonhap quoted Bhatiasevi as saying there are likely to be more cases of the virus than announced, as people who have mild symptoms are not tested.

The South's unification ministry said it would send a message to the North offering swift deliveries of Tamiflu and other medicine.

"Assistance must be provided swiftly as the disease could quickly spread in North Korea where conditions are not so good," President Lee Myung-Bak said.

Most government-to-government aid was suspended after cross-border relations worsened last year, although private South Korean groups still send shipments northwards.

Observers say the virus could pose a particular threat to the impoverished North because of malnutrition amid persistent food shortages and a lack of drugs.

Good Friends, a Seoul-based aid group with cross-border contacts, reported Monday the disease has been spreading rapidly because Tamiflu is rare there. Although, given the reported ineffectiveness of Tamiflu, it will be interesting to monitor how quickly the virus spreads.

It said seven youths died in Pyongyang in November while two others reportedly died in Pyongsong north of the capital.

Schools last Friday started their winter vacation a month early to guard against the spread of the disease, the group said.

Public health conditions are also dire with medical equipment and medicine in short supply and clean drinking water and sanitised items frequently problematic, it said.

Drugs for Leaders only
The conservative Dong-A Ilbo newspaper quoted unidentified sources as saying that North Korea has secured Tamiflu and other drugs through foreign missions in Europe but only for leader Kim Jong-Il and other top officials.

North Korea refused Tamiflu
In May, the WHO supplied a total of 2.4 million courses of Tamiflu to 72 countries, but Seoul officials said the North's likely share of this would be grossly inadequate.

"Considering the North's population is 24 million, and the infection rate going up to 20 to 30 percent in underdeveloped countries, the North would need the drug by the millions," said Kwon Jun-Wook, a swine flu specialist at the South Korean health ministry.

North Korea has a high death rate from pneumonia, which rises when there is a food shortage.

Kwon told Yonhap the (A)H1N1 virus has an even higher infection rate than pneumonia and would be more dangerous to the North Korean people.

Cairo Tries to Save Face after H1N1 Pig Slaughter Disaster

Cairo and Egypt are claiming to be able to turn trash into treasure, and at the same time keeping it green in Cairo.

In an attempt to help curb the city's stifling pollution and meet their energy needs too, a few Cairo families have begun to recycle waste by generating biogas from rubbish.

Recovery from disaster

This is felt to be a face saving gesture following a disasterous decision to slaughter all the nation's pigs, on the pretext that they were a threat to public health. The pigs were wholly owned by the zabaleen, a Coptic Christian sect that, for generations had used them to consume and clean up the city's garbage.

It is an ambitious project that is still in its infancy but may just catch on in this teeming city of 18 million people, currently obscured in a dirty grey veil of haze produced by the fumes from millions of car exhausts.

American sponsored solution
The initiative to transform organic waste into alternative energy, not in itself a new idea, was started by an American, Thomas Culhane, in east Cairo's Manshiet Nasser slums, which are known locally as Garbage City.

He runs Solar Cities, a non-governmental organisation that looks to design and develop technologies that aim to solve very local problems.

Following a grant from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2007, he has been installing solar panels to produce hot water for families in Garbage City.

The Christian zabaleen

This is where thousands of zabaleen, freelance trash collectors, hand-sort through tons of rubbish collected from the streets of the megalopolis and then sell recyclable material. In the past, the pigs consumed the edible waste material and in turn the zabaleen would eat the pigs and sustain their families.

Muslim acceptance

The Solar Cities idea was well received and began to spread to the neighbouring mainly Muslim area of Darb al-Ahmar, prompting Culhane and Hanna Fathy, a Manshiet Nasser resident involved in the scheme, to offer families "biogas digesters."

Simple solution

Made from two simple plastic tanks and tubes, the digesters convert organic matter into biogas through a process in which bacteria decompose the matter to produce methane for cooking and fertiliser which can then be resold.

"One man's garbage is another man's gold mine. One woman's trash is another woman's treasure," Culhane said.

The alternative would be that "I would be throwing this garbage out in the streets, there would be rats, flies, cats and dogs."

Spend money to save

The solar panels allow a family of 10 to save around 30 Egyptian pounds (5.4 dollars) a month, and biogas trims a further 10 pounds monthly.

This can mean valuable savings in Egypt, where the average household salary is around 100 dollars a month.

So far, however, Solar Cities has installed just 30 solar panels and seven biogas digesters.

The main hurdle is cost. Solar panels cost up to 2,400 Egyptian pounds and the digesters cost 700 Egyptian pounds, in a country where gas and fuel are heavily subsidised by the government.
"It's a very good system which has a future here, especially now that they have killed our pigs," insists Fathy, who says he remains optimistic about the project despite the obstacles.

Unnecessary Pig Slaughter
In May, Egypt ordered the slaughter of the nation's 250,000 pigs as part of swine flu prevention measures, even though the World Health Organisation said that taking such a drastic measure was not scientifically justified.

The pigs, which ate the teeming city's organic waste, were already involved in a recycling process that provided revenue and food for their owners.

"In the past they fed the organic waste to the pigs but even the pigs could not eat it all," Culhane said.

"Now the pigs are gone and there is nothing to transform Cairo's organic waste into safe products except biogas digesters."

"I miss the sound of the pigs," Fathy said, gesturing to the slum's rooftops where the zabaleen have now taken to raising goats and chickens.

"These animals can't swallow what the pigs use to," he said.

"We don't have big goals, we just want to be catalysts, to spread seed by seed a garden of solutions that make sense," Culhane said.

If the systems were applied on a large scale, he said, "we could solve 50 percent of Egypt's pollution problem and eliminate mechanically the organic garbage problem."

H1N1: Swine Flu Mutations endangers Europe: WHO issues ineffective rhetoric

Swine flu virus mutations are spreading in Europe, French health officials said Friday as the World Health Organisation reported a leap in deaths from the disease by more than 1,000 in a week.

Two patients who were infected by a mutation that was also recently detected in Norway have died in France, the government's Health Surveillance Institute (InVS) said in a statement.

"This mutation could increase the ability of the virus to affect the respiratory tracts and, in particular, the lung tissue," said a statement from "For one of these patients, this mutation was accompanied by another mutation known to confer resistance to oseltamivir," it added, referring to the main drug being used to treat swine flu, under the brand name Tamiflu.

The case was the first drug-resistant strain found in France among the 1,200 strains experts have analysed here, the InVS said, adding that "the effectiveness of vaccines currently available is not being questioned."

The two patients were not related and had been hospitalised in two different cities in France, it said.

The WHO said Friday the death toll had reached at least 7,826 worldwide since the A(H1N1) flu virus was first uncovered in April.

The number of deaths reported to the UN health agency showed the biggest rise in the Americas, where 5,360 deaths have now been recorded compared to 4,806 a week ago.

But Europe also posted a substantial increase percentage-wise with at least 650 fatalities now reported, representing a surge of 300 deaths or 85 percent from data posted a week ago.

The WHO said Thursday it was investigating reports of mutations in the virus, after half a dozen countries recorded such cases.

"The question is whether these mutations again suggest that there is a fundamental change going on in viruses out there -- whether there's a turn for the worse in terms of severity," said Keiji Fukuda, WHO's special adviser on pandemic influenza.

"The answer right now is that we are not sure," he added following reports from China, Japan, Norway, Ukraine and the United States.

He noted, however, that mutations are common in influenza viruses, and "if every mutation is reported out there it would be like reporting changes in the weather."

"What we're trying to do when we see reports of mutations is to identify if these mutations are leading to any kinds of changes in the clinical picture -- do they cause more severe or less severe disease?

"Also we're trying to see if these viruses are increasing out there as that would suggest a change in epidemiology," he added.

China said earlier Thursday that it had discovered eight people with mutated versions of swine flu while Norway reported last week that it had detected one case.

Fukuda also said that the UN health agency was looking into Tamiflu-resistant cases reported in Britain and the United States but noted they concerned people who are already undergoing treatment for other diseases or who have underlying health issues.

The health agency was therefore maintaining its assessment that Tamiflu, produced by Swiss drugmaker Roche, remained "effective" as a treatment for swine flu, but that "we do have to be vigilant in these very susceptible people."

H1N1:Japan experts go to Canada to study flu vaccine reactions - WHO

Tokyo (AFP) Nov 29, 2009 - Japan sent a team of health experts Sunday to Canada to investigate allergic reactions to swine flu vaccinations from British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

The World Health Organization said last week that an unusual number of severe allergic reactions to swine flu vaccinations have been recorded in Canada, where a batch of the vaccine from GSK has been recalled. The team from the health and welfare ministry was seen departing from Tokyo's Narita airport.

It is scheduled to spend four days in Canada to study precautionary measures against allergic reactions. Tokyo has ordered doses of GSK-made vaccinations for 37 million people, a shipment due for delivery in December in a country that has a limited supply of domestically-made prophylactics.

Japan started vaccinating medical workers against swine flu in October. Since May, the A(H1N1) virus is known to have killed 70 people in the country, which is now heading into the autumn-winter flu season.

H1N1: Dogs diagnosed with swine flu in China

Beijing (AFP) Nov 29, 2009 - Two dogs in Beijing have tested positive for swine flu in the second case of animals catching the disease in China along with pigs in the northeast, Chinese media said Sunday. The A(H1N1) virus detected in the dogs was 99 percent identical to the one circulating in humans, the state-run Beijing Times reported, quoting China's agriculture ministry.

The news comes 10 days after four pigs in China's Heilongjiang province were diagnosed with the virus, which specialists said might have been caught from humans, the report said. Countries including the United States, Canada and Chile have already reported cases of animals being infected with the A(H1N1) virus.

A cat in the US state of Iowa was diagnosed with swine flu at the beginning of the month in the first known case in the world of the new pandemic strain spreading to the feline population. The World Health Organisation has called for closer monitoring of farm workers and animals for influenza A viruses following the reported cases.

Citing an official at the Beijing municipal agriculture bureau, the report said the dogs probably contracted the virus from human sufferers who were in close contact with the canines. "Dogs can infect nearby dogs after they catch A(H1N1) flu," the unidentified official was quoted as saying. The agriculture ministry and the Beijing agriculture bureau were not immediately available for comment.

H1N1: Virus Mutation Increases Death Toll by 1,000 per week

Geneva (AFP) Nov 27, 2009 - The number of swine flu deaths showed a sharp jump compared to a week ago, but the World Health Organisation said Friday that the epidemic may have peaked in parts of the northern hemisphere. The number of deaths reported to the WHO was up 1,000 from a week ago, reaching at least 7,826 worldwide since the A(H1N1) virus was first uncovered in April, fresh data showed.

The number of deaths reported to the UN health agency showed the biggest rise in the Americas, where 5,360 deaths have now been recorded compared to 4,806 a week ago but Europe also posted a substantial increase percentage-wise with at least 650 fatalities now reported, representing a surge of 300 deaths or 85 percent from data posted a week ago.

The WHO said influenza activity appears to have peaked across North America, although in Canada, the number of hospitalisations and deaths is increasing. In European countries including Belgium, Bulgaria, Belarus, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway, Serbia, Ukraine and Iceland, influenza activity also appears to have reached a peak, added the WHO.

H1N1: Britain probes transmission of drug-resistant swine flu

British health authorities said Friday they are investigating what could be the world's first cases of person-to-person transmission of a strain of drug-resistant swine flu. Five people in a hospital unit in Wales have a strain of the A(H1N1) virus that is resistant to Tamiflu and "three of these appear to have acquired the infection in hospital", the public health service in Wales said.

"Although further epidemiological investigation is under way, it would seem likely that transmission of oseltamivir-resistant H1N1 virus has taken place," added the Health Protection Agency (HPA) in a separate statement.

This was a possible world first. The HPA noted that while almost 60 incidences of Tamiflu-resistant flu had been reported worldwide, "there have been no documented episodes of person-to-person transmission." It said the risk of drug-resistant flu remained "low" noting the five patients affected had severe underlying health conditions and were being treated at a special unit at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff.

The emergence of influenza A viruses that are resistant to Tamiflu is not unexpected in patients with serious underlying conditions and suppressed immune systems. The resistant strain "does not appear to be any more severe than the swine flu virus that has been circulating since April", and Tamiflu, made by Swiss drugs giant Roche, remained partly effective for most other people.

Scientific research confirms that Tamiflu and Relenza were never the 'cure all' drug that they were marketed as being.

The HPA said that another leading antiviral drug, Relenza, was being used to treat the five Welsh patients and they were "responding well". Two patients had recovered and been discharged from hospital, one remained in critical care and two others continue to be treated, officials said.

Britain is the European country most affected by swine flu, with about 715,000 cases of the virus and 100 deaths since the pandemic began.

The latest data from the World Health Organisation showed that around 6,750 people worldwide had died from swine flu since the virus was first uncovered in Mexico and the United States in April.

H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine: Production Problems

The World Health Organisation says global production of vaccines for pandemic flu will be "substantially less" than the previous maximum forecast of 94 million doses a week.

WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl says the number of doses produced in a year will fall short of the 4.9 billion doses the global health body previously hoped could be available.

Hartl says production will be lower because some manufacturers are still turning out vaccines for seasonal flu.

He told reporters in Geneva on Friday that production problems have also reduced the weekly output of pandemic vaccine.

WHO says that in theory all the world's 6.3 billion people should receive at least one dose of vaccine against the pandemic strain of H1N1, also known as swine flu.

Memes from 'Infectious' Bloggers & Twitters

The way that certain images, videos or concepts can suddenly spread like wildfire across the web, using email and social websites to propagate, is one of online culture's most unique phenomena.

Now Spanish researchers claim to have found a way to accurately predict how quickly and widely new "memes", as they are called, will spread. The ability to forecast this "viral" behaviour would be of great interest to sociologists and marketeers, among others.

The secret, they say, is to recognise the fact that people vary in how "infectious" they are when it comes to sharing content online. While some people pass on things they receive right away, others do so after some delay, or not at all.

Medical models
The viral spread of information online has conventionally been modelled using epidemiological tools developed to analyse the spread of biological viruses.

One of the concepts borrowed is that of an infection's R₀, or basic reproductive number, which describes how many other people someone with the virus can be expected to infect. Knowing the R₀ number help predict the likelihood and extent of real life epidemics, such as H1N1 swine flu.

Rememebr that models that apply the idea to online information can only indicate whether an internet meme is likely to be successful or to die out quickly, says Esteban Moro at the Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain.

Moro, working with José Luis Iribarren at IBM in Madrid, used IBM's company email newsletter to show the importance of variations between people's infectiousness in propagating memes online.

H1N1 Swine Flu: A Serving UK Soldier dies after contracting the virus

A serving UK soldier has been revealed as the latest patient to die after contracting H1N1, swine flu virus.
Bombardier Lee Porter, from Coleraine in Northern Ireland, died last week, two weeks after contracting the bug - it is reported that he had underlying health problems.

The 30-year-old member of the Royal Artillery is thought to be the first UK serviceman to have fallen victim to the bug.

According to the announcement, Bombardier Porter died on Friday at Frimley Park hospital in Surrey, making him the 28th person known to have died after getting swine flu in England.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said: "It is with great sadness that the MoD must confirm the death of Bombardier Lee Porter, who contracted Swine Flu two weeks ago, which complicated existing health problems. Our thoughts go out to his family, who were at his bedside at the time."

110,000 New Cases
The latest figures on swine flu show that cases of the virus "may have plateaued", according to the Government. Their data, released today, showed that there were 110,000 new cases in England last week.

That represents a 10 per cent rise on the 100,000 new cases estimated in the previous weeks. Twenty seven people in England have died from swine flu, while 793 patients are being treated in hospital, that figure is down on the 840 of last week.

UK Schoolgirl on Life-Support
A British schoolgirl being treated in Greece for swine flu is on a life support machine but is showing signs of improvement and is said to be 'a little better.'

Natasha Newman, 16, from Highgate, north London, is in an Athens hospital after falling ill on the island of Cephalonia. Doctors at the intensive care unit of Penteli Children's Hospital described her condition as 'serious but stable.'

Pneumonia
One doctor, who did not wish to be named, said: "She has better lung function than yesterday and the day before. She has pneumonia, which is not something easy, but she has no lasting damage to her lungs and she is not in a dangerous condition."

H1N1: 'First' Official Swine-flu death in African Continent

South Africa has confirmed its first death from swine flu, believed to be the first officially documented fatality from the virus in sub-Saharan Africa.

Health officials said a 22-year-old student had died on 28 July, and tests had confirmed the cause of death as the onset of Pneumonia following the initial infection by the H1N1 influenza virus.

150 Confirmed Cases

The country has had at least 150 confirmed swine flu cases, the highest officially reported rate in sub-Saharan Africa. This may be due to more stringent testing and reporting methods carried out by the South Africans.

Cases Unreported

The illness has caused hundreds of deaths in North and South America. Dozens more have died in Asia and Europe. Africa was thought to be one of the last continents to be hit by the virus and so far the number of officially reported cases are low.

ECDPC report

South Africa confirmed its first case of the disease on 18 June 2009 and has had 151 cases in total, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. The SA health ministry called the student's death "unfortunate and deeply regretted".

Pneumonia

A statement from the ministry said he had been ill for about a week before going to a Western Cape hospital, where he was treated with antibiotics for the onset of pneumonia, often the final stage of the disease. Unfortunately the treatment was unsuccesful and he died two days later.

Mild Cases

The ministry's statement added: "We are encouraged by the fact that the majority of cases in South Africa have so far been mild and we hope that this will remain so, despite this unfortunate death."

Young Children suffer Tamiflu side-effects

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More than half of children taking Tamiflu suffer side-effects such as nausea, insomnia and nightmares, researchers have said.

Two studies from experts at the Health Protection Agency (HPA) showed a "high proportion" of British schoolchildren reporting problems after taking the anti-viral drug.

Data was gathered from children at three schools in London and one in the South West who were given Tamiflu earlier this year after classmates became infected.

The researchers behind one study said that, although children may have attributed symptoms that were due to other illnesses to the use of Tamiflu, "this is unlikely to account for all the symptoms experienced".

Their research, published in Eurosurveillance, looked at side-effects reported by 11 and 12-year-old pupils in one school year in a secondary school in South West England. The school was closed for 10 days in response to a pupil being confirmed with swine flu on return from a holiday in Cancun, Mexico.

A total of 248 pupils took part in the study and were given Tamiflu prophylactically. Compliance with prophylaxis was high, with 77% of children taking the full course, the researchers said. But they added: "Fifty-one per cent experienced symptoms such as feeling sick (31.2%), headaches (24.3%) and stomach ache (21.1%).

The researchers said "likely side-effects were common" and the "burden of side-effects needs to be considered" when deciding on giving Tamiflu to children prophylactically. The researchers concluded that a "high proportion of school children may experience side-effects of oseltamivir (Tamiflu) medication".

H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine - Human Trials start in Australia

The number of people calling in sick with swine flu symptoms has tripled in a week, with 130,000 people staying away from work.

Worldwide, 700 people have died!

News of the increase in absenteeism came as the British death toll from the virus rose to 31, with a 51-year-old woman from Wiltshire and the 15-year-old from Glasgow the latest victims.

Greatest Challenge to NHS
Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer, yesterday warned that swine flu “almost certainly” posed the biggest challenge to the NHS for a generation. Fears of swine flu crisis grow as six-year-old girl and doctor dieAlmost 130,000 people stayed off work with flu, coughs and colds on July 14, up from 45,000 a week before, according to FirstCare, an absence management company.

Absentees triple
While absences tripled, the number of people who have actually contracted the virus is thought to have only doubled over the same period, highlighting how fear of infection is damaging business.

Septic Shock
Meanwhile, it has emerged that Chloe Buckley, the girl thought to have been the first healthy young victim of swine flu, died from septic shock after a bout of tonsillitis, a post mortem examination indicated. The death of Chloe, six, from West Drayton, west London, alarmed parents of young children.

Dr Simon Tanner, London’s regional director of public health, said it was impossible “to say to what degree swine flu contributed to her death”.

Andrew McCombe, a leading surgeon, said it was rare for a child to die from septic shock after contracting tonsillitis. “Normally septic shock affects old people,” he said.

Human Vaccine Trials to Begin
Human trials of a vaccine to protect against the H1N1 swine flu virus have begun in Australia.
Vaxine and CSL have both started injecting human volunteers this week, but it will be at least six weeks before the initial results are known.

Morbidity rate increases
The overall morbidity figure is likely to climb on Thursday when the Department of Health gives its weekly update. Worldwide, more than 700 people have died.

H1N1 Pandemic: Sudden Spike in swine flu alerts GPs & MDs

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GPs have seen a leap of almost 50% in the numbers of people contacting them with fears they have swine flu in the last week, new figures reveal.

Around 40,000 people a week in England and Wales are now complaining to their doctor of "flu-like illness", with a dramatic rise in the number of young children being affected.

The Royal College

The figures, from the Royal College of GPs' monitoring system, showed 50.3 people per 100,000 were reporting flu-like illness between June 29 and July 5, but this leapt by 46% to 73.4 people per 100,000 between July 6 and 12.

Financial Times

Almost one in eight workers are likely to be kept at home with the virus in the next few weeks, according to Government figures. This could leave many businesses struggling to run as normal, the Financial Times reported.

Sir Liam Donaldson is expected to announce that 30% of the population is likely to be infected during this first wave of the pandemic, the FT newspaper said.

Young at most Risk
Wednesday's weekly report from the Royal College of GPs said: "National incidence of influenza-like illness increased for all regions and is now evident in all age groups but remains highest in five to 14 age groups."

Central England Hotspot
The study said the highest number of cases was being seen in central England but the North had seen "a marked increase compared to previous weeks".

There has been a small decrease in the number of cases being seen in London although the capital remains a major hot spot for the virus.

Statistics
The rate of influenza-like illness is highest among those aged five to 14, at 159.57 per 100,000 population. The next most affected group is youngsters and babies aged up to four, at 114.12 per 100,00 population. This is followed by people aged 15 to 44, those aged 45 to 64 and then people aged 65 and over.

Ant-viral Vaccine
The Government has insisted that the swine flu vaccine should begin arriving at the end of August, amid genuine fears of a delay in this delivery date, and further delay before people receive jabs.

The UK claims, it is in line to get around 60 million doses of the vaccine - enough to cover half the population - by the end of December, with the rest of the doses following next year.

Vaccine Production Delayed
This is a substantial turn around in their earlier claims and the first phase of the virus should have run its course by then. The mutated second phase will take over and the vaccine will be ineffective against it.

Virus Dictates Timeline
It is impossible to determine how the H1N1 virus will mutate, so scientists are unable to prepare in advance for this strain. Only when the new strain is identified will they be able to start on development of a new anti-viral vaccine.

So, the development, testing and distribution of a second antiviral vaccine will need to start after January 2010 and is therefore unlikely to be in production before the Spring 2010.