Word: influenzae
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...months of January and February. Instead, student absentee rates in places like Tuskegee-based Macon County climbed to 16% last week, prompting the county school district to close six schools. "To say it's just the flu," says McVay, "tell that to someone whose infant has died of influenza. Yes, it's just another case of the flu, but we can slow the spread. Keep the sick children home so the well children can keep going to school." (See the top 5 swine...
...Such predictions are also a way for public health officials to get a handle on how infectious a new influenza like H1N1 might be, how it spreads, and how quickly. That helps them know how much vaccine might be needed, how to distribute it, and when to expect a surge in demand for flu treatments, including antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu and Relenza. It can also help predict when hospitals might become overwhelmed by flu cases, and prepare them to patch up already strained health care resources...
...Influenza vaccinations are usually an afterthought for most people. Despite the easy availability of the shots, fewer than 40% of Americans get them in any one year - never mind that flu kills some 36,000 of us annually. But this flu season is likely to be different. Thanks to the new H1N1/09 virus, to which almost none of us are immune, flu anxiety is high - and demand for the new vaccine should be too. Washington is now gearing up to respond, hoping to inoculate millions of Americans and blunt the severity of the first pandemic in four decades...
...Medlock and co-author Alison Galvani of Yale University School of Medicine studied mortality data and data of infectious contacts from the influenza pandemics of 1918 and 1957. They then built a mathematical model to determine the best distribution by age for vaccinations, in order to contain the spread of a theoretical pandemic. In their calculations, the most effective policy was to aim first for inoculating children ages 5 to 19 and adults ages 30 to 39. That's because school-age children are such a powerful nexus of flu infection: they get sick, infect one another in the close...
...virus doesn't mutate into something more deadly, health officials in the northern hemisphere face another decision: whether to keep schools open. Young students are known by influenza epidemiologists as "super spreaders" because they shed more flu virus when ill, are unlikely to practice good hand hygiene, and are in close contact with parents and peers. Writing in the August edition of British medical journal the Lancet Infectious Diseases, researchers from Imperial College in London predicted that early and prolonged school closures could ease the burden on hospitals by reducing the number of cases at the peak of the pandemic...