Word: h1n1
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Eric Lander, a person you just heard from, Ernie Moniz, for their service on my council of advisors on science and technology. And they have been hugely helpful to us already on looking at, for example, how the federal government can most effectively respond to the threat of the H1N1 virus. So I'm very grateful to them...
Scary words. But White House officials were quick to assure that Obama's proclamation was more of a formality, and wasn't meant to indicate that the H1N1 virus had suddenly become more deadly or dangerous. Instead, by declaring a national emergency, the White House will allow hospitals and governments on the local level to more rapidly prepare triage sites and procedures to handle any future surge in sick patients. A hospital in danger of being overrun by H1N1 patients would be allowed to segregate them in a separate site for treatment, which might slow the spread of the disease...
...sounded worse that it was. Late Friday evening, with a stroke of his pen, President Barack Obama declared H1N1 a national emergency. The statement said that Obama does "hereby find and proclaim that, given the rapid increase in illness across the Nation may overburden health care resources and that the temporary waiver of certain standard Federal requirements may be warranted in order to enable U.S. health care facilities to implement emergency operations plans, the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic in the United States constitutes a national emergency...
...even though the emergency declaration doesn't mean the end of the world has arrived, H1N1 remains a serious threat - and the government's response, on all levels, has been spotty. On Friday the CDC reported that the H1N1 virus is now widespread in 46 U.S. states - a level of flu activity that is usually not seen until later in the winter. Since the virus began spreading, millions of Americans have been infected, at least 20,000 have been hospitalized and 1,000 have died - including nearly 100 children. "To be basically in the peak of the flu season...
...best way to slow the growth of those numbers would be to rapidly manufacture and distribute the new H1N1 vaccine. But that's proven even more difficult than health officials anticipated when the virus first began spreading in the spring. Drug manufacturers have experienced setbacks growing the vaccine - instead of the 120 million doses the CDC had initially hoped to have by the end of October, the real number will likely be closer to 30 million. "Vaccine production is much less predictable than we wish," says Frieden. "We are nowhere near where we thought...