Word: influenza
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...just tickled a bit, said the first recipients of the 2009 H1N1 flu-vaccine nasal spray, which rolled off production lines into cities including New York and Chicago this week, just in time for the official start of the influenza season on Oct. 4. Not everyone who wanted the vaccine got it, though. Only 2.4 million of the government's total order of 251 million doses were released. That isn't nearly enough to satisfy even the early adopters--especially since states like New York have mandated flu vaccinations for all health-care workers. But federal health officials decided...
...mandate comes from the health department of New York, which over the summer became the first state to require that all health-care workers be vaccinated against influenza. In other states, individual hospitals have taken the same aggressive position. Given that the pandemic H1N1 strain is circulating the globe - and that one of the seasonal-flu strains is resistant to Tamiflu, a commonly used antiviral treatment - such a policy seems logical. But is it legal? Flu-vaccine requirements are being challenged by health-care workers who maintain that decisions about vaccination should be theirs and theirs alone. In the state...
Health-care workers are especially vulnerable to both getting sick with influenza and spreading it to patients. That's why the U.S. government has singled out these workers, along with other high-risk groups, to receive the first batches of 2009 H1N1 vaccine, which are just starting to arrive in some states. Vaccination can reduce the risk of getting influenza 70% to 80% and is the most effective way to curb the pandemic. "It is within the purview of health authorities that we engage in certain infection-control activities," says Susan Waltman, general counsel of the Greater New York Hospital...
...Massachusetts Department of Public Health no longer recommends testing to distinguish H1N1 flu from seasonal flu, so students who have flu symptoms are simply diagnosed with an influenza-like illness. According to Rosenthal, testing at other colleges has revealed that 75 to 80 percent of flu cases are H1N1...
...continues to focus on isolating students diagnosed with influenza-like illness...