>>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.
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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.
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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.
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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.

>>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.

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“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.

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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

>>Man gives pigs flu, pigs give flu right back?
Swine flu roots traced to Spanish flu

>>Preempting pandemics: Using the internet as an outbreak watchdog
Did pandemic-watchers miss the signs online

>>Canada hit with first severe case of swine flu

An Alberta girl with no apparent link to Mexico is in hospital with Canada’s first reported severe case of swine flu — a sign the nasty bug is now spreading here at home.

Public health officials acknowledged Monday the H1N1 influenza is infecting those with no immediately obvious connections to Mexico. Federal officials reported 41 new cases Monday, bringing the total to 140 across the country.

Dr. David Butler-Jones, the chief public health officer, said news of the more severe case “although disconcerting, is not surprising and does not change our course of action.”

Full Article:  here.