Word: strains
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...also announced that it would begin the process of preparing a swine flu vaccine strain. But the agency recommended that drug companies continue to make a seasonal flu vaccine instead of switching immediately to the production of an A/H1N1 flu vaccine. That's important because drugmakers are currently producing a flu vaccine for the southern hemisphere, where the flu season has just begun. (The flu season in the north has just ended.) If vaccine manufacturing capacity were switched from the standard flu to swine flu, that could create a shortfall in normal flu vaccine, potentially leading to needless deaths should...
...same time, the very nature of globalization puts us at greater risk. International air travel means that infections can spread very quickly. And while the WHO can prepare a new swine flu vaccine strain in fairly short order, we still use a laborious, decades-old process to manufacture vaccines, meaning it would take months before the pharmaceutical industry could produce its full capacity of doses - and even then, there wouldn't be enough for everyone on the planet. The U.S. could be particularly vulnerable; only one plant, in Stillwater, Penn., makes flu vaccine in America. In a pandemic, that could...
...professor of virology at Britain's University of Aberdeen. Pennington points out that conventional wisdom in 1976 held that the 1918 flu pandemic - which started among soldiers and eventually killed as many as 40 million - was the result of swine flu (scientists now know it was in fact a strain of bird flu). Despite modern advances in microbiology, today's health officials still make decisions in a "cloud of uncertainty," Pennington says. "At the moment, our understanding of the current outbreak is similarly limited. For example, we don't yet understand why people are dying in Mexico but not elsewhere...
...Medical historians and epidemiologists say there are many differences between the relatively benign 1976 outbreak and the current strain of swine flu that is spreading across the globe. But they also say the decisions made in the wake of the '76 outbreak - and the public's response to them - provide a cautionary tale for public health officials, who may soon have to consider whether to institute draconian measures to combat the disease. (See pictures of the swine flu outbreak in Mexico...
...This is significantly less than what the old Party Fund used to be,” Financial Committee Chair Sundeep S. Iyer ’11 said in response to concerns about the strain this plan would place on the Council’s budget in the next school year. “I don’t think restarting this program will threaten our financial solvency...