>>Swine flu shuts down nursery at Mt. Sinai hospital

No newborn babies have been infected with swine flu but a nursery at Mount Sinai Hospital has been closed after somebody who was in contact with the unit was confirmed to have a minor case of the H1N1 virus.

“I can tell you at the moment no babies have been infected, but obviously there’s a time period after exposure so the investigation is going to go on,” Dr. Alison McGeer, director of infection control at Mount Sinai Hospital, said.

Full Article: here.

>>Mystery Aborigine swine flu death

Officials in Australia are trying to determine how an Aboriginal man caught and then died from swine flu.

The 26-year-old man became Australia’s first person to die after testing positive for the virus.

He had been living in Kiwirrkurra, one of the country’s most remote Outback communities.

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In the past week the number of confirmed cases doubled in the Northern Territory, where Aborigines make up almost one-third of the population.

Full Article: here.

>>Vaccinate kids to control H1N1 flu – researchers

Targeting children for vaccination may be the best way of using limited supplies of vaccine to control the current H1N1 flu pandemic, British researchers said on Thursday.

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Researchers from the University of Warwick said that vaccinating children rather than adults would not only help protect a group at greatest risk of exposure to the virus, but would also offer protection to unvaccinated adults.

This so-called “herd immunity” effect would mean significantly less vaccine would be needed to help control the spread of H1N1, also known as swine flu, which was first detected in Mexico in April.

Full Article: here.

>>First batch of swine flu vaccine produced

Swiss pharmaceuticals company Novartis AG said Friday it has successfully produced a first batch of swine flu vaccine weeks ahead of expectations.

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The announcement comes a day after the World Health Organization declared swine flu, also known as the H1N1 virus, a pandemic. The move indicates that a global outbreak is under way. WHO says drugmakers will likely have vaccines approved and ready for sale after September.

Full Article: here.

>>WHO: Swine flu pandemic has begun, 1st in 41 years

The World Health Organization declared a swine flu pandemic Thursday — the first global flu epidemic in 41 years — as infections in the United States, Europe, Australia, South America and elsewhere climbed to nearly 30,000 cases.

The long-awaited pandemic announcement is scientific confirmation that a new flu virus has emerged and is quickly circling the globe.

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WHO chief Dr. Margaret Chan made the announcement Thursday after the U.N. agency held an emergency meeting with flu experts.

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“The world is moving into the early days of its first influenza pandemic in the 21st century,” Chan told reporters. “The (swine flu) virus is now unstoppable.”

Full Article: here.

Swine flu cases on remote Manitoba reserve a ‘wake-up call’: chief

The emergence of swine flu on a remote northern Manitoba reserve is a wake-up call for governments to address poor living conditions and improve health care for aboriginals, the community’s chief said Thursday.

David McDougall of St. Theresa Point First Nation said there are two confirmed cases of swine flu on the reserve. Another 21 people are in hospital suffering from flu-like symptoms.

As a result, some people in the community of 3,200 are wearing masks and most are avoiding large get-togethers, he said.

It’s still not clear how swine flu reached the reserve, McDougall said. But he added the spread of the illness has likely been exacerbated by the shortage of housing and cramped quarters.

Full Article: here.

>>Swine Flu Spam Spikes In May: McAfee

Swine flu spam was the attack du jour in May for spammers, who sent more than 5 billion swine flu spam messages a day in just six days, according to a McAfee June 2009 spam report released Monday.

Full Article: here.

The irony

Current definition of spam: Unsolicited e-mail sent to a large number of addresses.

Original meaning: A spiced canned pork product.

>>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.

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[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.
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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.