>>Swine Flu Vaccine Possible by October

A U.S. health official said a swine flu vaccine could be available as early as October, but only if production and testing run smoothly this summer.

Full Article: here.

>>Australia swine flu ship isolated

A cruise ship carrying 2,000 passengers has been ordered to stay at sea off the coast of Australia after three crew tested positive for swine flu.

Full Article: here.

>>New York City reopens schools shuttered by flu

Students have returned to more than two dozen New York City public schools that were closed because of swine flu.

Full Article: here.

>>Politician’s Novel Idea for Mexican Tourism:  Statue of Swine Flu Survivor

Édgar Hernández, the Mexican kindergartner who is the first person known to have contracted the swine flu now circling the globe, may soon have a statue erected in his honor in the mountain village where he lives.

…

[Gov. Fidel Herrera] considers Édgar to be not “Patient Zero,” the source of a global outbreak, but rather the first person in the world known to have survived the virus. In an interview with local reporters on Sunday, the governor likened the statue, which might be made of concrete or bronze, to the Manneken Pis in Brussels, the sculpture of a little boy peeing in a fountain.

Full Article: here.

>>Toronto Man May Be GTA & Ontario’s First H1N1 Flu Death

Toronto appears to have its first case of a death from the H1N1 flu. Ontario Health Minister David Caplan confirms that a man died at his home on Saturday, and it’s believed he may have succumbed from complications of the disease.

Full Article: here.

UPDATED:  ‘Atypical’ Toronto swine flu victim had other medical condition: official

>>Doctors ponder separate swine flu vaccine

Medical experts are still debating whether to offer a separate swine flu vaccine for Ontarians, Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams says.

The annual flu vaccine offered free to provincial residents is already in production for this fall’s influenza season, he said. “So if we’re going to make one for H1N1 it would have to be a separate one,” Williams said yesterday.

Full Article: here.

>>Gwynne Dyer: Of Pandemics and Pork

We seem to have got away with it this time. The swine flu turned out not to be a global killer, at least not in this first go-round. But we have had a fright, and maybe we should learn something from it.

In 1994, only 10% of American pigs lived out their brief lives in vast factory farms. Only seven years later, in 2001, 72% did.
…
During the past several thousand years, major quick-killer epidemic diseases that affect human beings have emerged, on average only once every few hundred years. But now that we keep most of our livestock in crowded cages for their entire lives, generally living above a cess-pool of their own excrement and exchanging disease pathogens at blinding speed, the speed of evolution of the pathogens has accelerated dramatically.
…
The giant corporations that drove most small hog-breeders out of business in the United States — from more than a million farms raising 53 million hogs in 1965 to only 65 000 facilities growing 65 million hogs today — are now active all over the world. In Romania, for example, the number of hog farmers fell from 477 000 to just 52 000 in only four years after the agribusiness giants arrived on the scene in 2003.
…

But then, pork prices in the United States dropped by one-fifth between 1970 and 2004, according to the US Department of Agriculture. That means that factory farming is saving the average American consumer US$29 a year, or about US$2, 40 a month. What’s the risk of a lethal global pandemic compared to savings like that?

Full Article:  here.

New strains of MRSA (Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus), of VRE (Vancomycin-resistant enterococci), C. difficile, even TB are becoming drug-resistant.  Some are now classified as XDR:  extensively drug-resistant.  Many of these “superbugs” spread fastest in what should be the most hygienic and safe of environments — hospitals.

Hospital-acquired infections (HAI) are a growing fear in the public’s mind, litigation is on the rise, and millions are spent on new cleaning protocols alone.  The average cost of hospital care for patients who acquired infections is over $180,000 (US) compared with $31,000 (US) for regular acute patients.  A single class action suit in Canada (against Ontario’s St. Joseph Brant hospital) totaled $50M, and since 2005 the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has paid £12 million to people claiming compensation involving superbugs.  Financial news sources in the US are predicting this as just the beginning of a wave of superbug-related litigation.

Yet one of the most effective strategies in combatting hospital-acquired infections (HAI) is simple contact management — tracing and understanding interactions:  between patients and staff, patients and equipment, staff and equipment.  Hospitals currently lack the means to track the spread of these outbreaks within their walls, and unable to isolate where contamination occurred and how it is spreading, time and resources are spent starting from scratch every time.

Keeping track of who touched what and what went where, done manually, can quickly add to, not alleviate the burden on overworked professionals.  However, data gathered through RFID happens automatically (no extra steps for hospital personnel); is accurate; and is available in real-time.

That’s why Infonaut Inc has created a precise RFID and GIS-based infectious disease risk-management tool, called Hospital Watch Live (HWL).

“We are very excited to be working on this project and about the potential it brings to the healthcare industry,” said Niall Wallace, CEO, Infonaut. “This innovative health IT product will help health stakeholders control the spread of infectious diseases such as C. difficile. In the future, we hope that hospitals, long-term care facilities and other health facilities will be able to use this system to help manage and reduce the impact of future number of disease outbreaks.”

When a “Patient Zero” is identified in Hospital Watch Live, GIS mapping technology combines with RFID locators to support immediate risk assessment, containment and outbreak mitigation.  RFID tag technology enables hospitals to literally see who and what infected patients have interacted with, where they have been, and which equipment has been in close proximity to them – all turned into actionable information.  An analytical extension determines potential commonalities and high-risk contacts. Profiles are dynamically generated: as people and assets interact with each other, associated risk levels change to reflect new inputs.

“We recognize the importance of supporting the development of this unique system that could help staff manage the spread of infectious diseases at SAH [Sault Area Hospital] while creating a value-added product for use throughout the healthcare sector,” said David Orazietti, MPP for Sault Ste Marie.

A Beta implementation of Hospital Watch Live will launch within the next month at the Sault Area Hospital (SAH), a provincial leader in C. difficile management.

“The Sault Area Hospital is pleased to collaborate on this innovative solution with Infonaut,” said Marc Bouchard, Chief Information and Privacy Officer, Sault Area Hospital. “The project will see the development of what should be an interesting tool that could assist our ongoing efforts in infection control and prevention.”

The next phase of development on the HWL solution includes installation and simulated use in George Brown College (GBC)’s Controlled Applied Learning Environment (CALE), Simulated Practice Centre (SPC).  George Brown’s $1.2 million advanced facility incorporates an electronic health records system, video camera broadcast system, and complex simulation mannequins.  Nursing students will use the system as part of the infection control curriculum, and other faculty and students will be involved in the testing and development of system components.

This relationship gives Infonaut a strategic advantage, as testing on hyper-real simulations that give hospitals and healthcare organizations added confidence in the robustness of Infonaut’s technology.  Robert Luke, Director of Research and Innovation at GBC said of Infonaut’s technology: “This is the kind of applied research the country needs — innovation meeting real needs.”

To learn more about this product, or the rest of the Infonaut Live suite, please contact Sandra Linklater, Director of Business Development at slinklater[at]infonaut[dot]ca or 705-987-3816.

>>Spread of Swine Flu Puts Japan in Crisis Mode

On Thursday, confirmed cases of the H1N1 flu virus in Japan reached 279, centering on Kobe and the neighboring city of Osaka, in western Japan. Like many other countries, Japan has reported mild flu cases and no deaths. Still, it is in crisis mode: more than 4,800 schools have been closed in the region, medical services are swamped, and testing laboratories are working around the clock.

…

The outbreak has come as a particular shock for hygiene-obsessed Japan, where hand-washing is religiously taught in schools, children play in sanitized sandboxes, and everything from underwear to ballpoint pens comes with supposed antibacterial properties.

Full Article: here.

>>Mexico City ends swine flu alert, no cases in week

Mexico City lowered its swine flu alert level from yellow to green on Thursday, and the mayor said “we can relax” now that there have been no new infections for a week.

City Health Secretary Armando Ahued said nobody has been hospitalized with respiratory infections in the last three days, and no swine flu cases have been confirmed since May 14. “We are seeing a 96.1 percent drop in cases, and that’s why we are dropping the alert level to green today,” Ahued said.

Full Article: here.

>>Nations urge WHO to change criteria for pandemic

Dozens of countries urged the World Health Organization to change its criteria for declaring a pandemic, saying the agency must consider how deadly a virus is — not just how far it spreads across the globe.

Fearing a swine flu pandemic declaration could spark mass panic and economic devastation, Britain, Japan, China and others asked the global body on Monday to tread carefully before raising its alert. Some cited the costly and potentially risky consequences, such as switching from seasonal to pandemic vaccine, even though the virus so far appears to be mild.

Full Article: here.

>>WHO meets on production of swine flu vaccine

As swine flu cases topped 6,600 worldwide, vaccine makers and other experts met Thursday at the World Health Organization to discuss the tough decisions that must be made quickly to fight the evolving virus.

…

“It’s a foregone conclusion,” said David Fedson, a vaccines expert and former professor of medicine at the University of Virginia. “If we don’t invest in an H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine, then possibly we could have a reappearance of this virus in a mild, moderate, or catastrophic form and we would have absolutely nothing.”

Most flu vaccine companies can only make one vaccine at a time: seasonal flu vaccine or pandemic vaccine. Production takes months and it is impossible to switch halfway through if health officials make a mistake.

Full Article:  here.

>>Swine Flu Outbreak Shuts Down 3 Schools

New York City has closed three schools in response to a swine flu outbreak that has left an assistant principal in critical condition and sent hundreds of children home with flu symptoms, in a flare-up of the virus that caused such concern around the world last month.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) said four students and the assistant principal have documented cases of the H1N1 flu at a Queens middle school. More than 50 students at the school have gone home sick with flulike symptoms, he said. At another Queens middle school, 241 students were absent Thursday. Dozens more were sick at an elementary school.

Full Article:  here.

>>Swine flu outbreak no reason to panic

It’s difficult to tell in some instances which is moving faster — the virus or the information announcing its progression. Updates arrive not hourly, but every minute, from every corner of the globe.

Here in Kingston, we can go online to www.kfla.ca and click on the infection watch live website to monitor changes in area illness activity. Green, yellow and red indicate, respectively, normal, elevated or high activity of respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses.

Full Article:  here.

>> Kingstonians appear to be taking outbreak seriously

Gemmill said that local health authorities are monitoring the new influenza strain via a 24- hour “syndromic surveillance” system that reports any unusual changes in respiratory and gastrointestinal illness activity. The public can view the system by logging onto www.kfla.ca and clicking on “infection watch live website.”

Full Article:  here.

>>Does WHO need to declare flu a full pandemic?

With most people breathing easier about H1N1 flu, the World Health Organisation finds itself in a bind about how to respond to the continuing spread of the virus whose effects have proved mainly mild.

The United Nations agency’s guidelines state that as soon as the virus starts spreading freely in two regions of the world, its six-point pandemic alert should be raised to the top notch.

With infection numbers rising in Europe, public health experts are struggling to decide whether it is worth sounding the full alarm over H1N1, which is treatable with existing drugs and appears less severe than seasonal flu in most cases.

…

“Level 6 does not mean, in any way, that we are facing the end of the world,” [WHO Director General Margaret Chan] told the Spanish daily El Pais this week. She stressed that the alert ladder indicates how likely the virus is to spread around the world, not how dangerous it is.

Full Article: here.

>>Flu spat cools budding Mexico-China relationship

China’s decision to quarantine dozens of Mexicans to guard against the spread of a deadly new flu has soured the relationship between the two exporters, which compete for access to the U.S. market.

…

Mexico accused China of discrimination after Beijing, worried about the H1N1 flu strain, ordered some 70 Mexicans, including a honeymooning couple, into seclusion, even though none had symptoms.

Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa called the isolation measures “unacceptable” and “without foundation” and advised Mexicans against traveling to China.

Full Article: here