Word: viruses
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...over the past two weeks, fears over H1N1 have cooled considerably, as the virus has failed to spread easily outside North America and the number of deaths from the disease has remained low, leaving the WHO fending off critics who questioned whether the international agency overreacted. "We know that we are seeing things change on an almost daily basis," said Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's interim director for health, safety and the environment. "It is still a confusing situation." (See pictures as the swine flu hit Mexico...
...Science study also indicates that young people - those who are generally the most resistant to the seasonal flu - are especially vulnerable to H1N1. It's still not clear why that is. It could be that older people are more likely to have contracted a virus similar to H1N1 in the past, which might give them some immunity. Or it may be that young people simply encountered H1N1 more often in the early days of the outbreak. The only thing that's clear is that young people are contracting it and they are getting sick. In the small Mexican town...
...epidemiologists begin to crunch the data on H1N1, we should have a better idea of how it spreads - and how dangerous it might be. New studies published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine indicate that older people in the U.S. also appear to have escaped the virus - just 5% of U.S. patients with confirmed cases of H1N1 are 51 or older. Still, since health officials have so far focused mostly on outbreaks in schools, it's possible they are simply missing older cases. "This is an evolving outbreak and we're still learning how this virus works," said...
...major question is what impact the virus will have in the next flu season, when the conditions could be ripe for the disease to spread rapidly. Another concern is what will happen in developing countries that haven't yet had to deal with H1N1. Rich countries like the U.S. can afford to spend millions on antivirals like Tamiflu, but in poorer nations, especially in those parts of sub-Saharan Africa where rampant HIV makes the population more vulnerable to secondary infections like flu, H1N1 will likely take a far greater toll. Indeed, health officials said last week that early evidence...
...those uncertainties that keep the WHO on edge, even after most of the world has moved on from H1N1. The agency is looking to develop a new pandemic alert system that would reflect the potential severity of a new virus - as opposed to the current system, which registers only the transmissibility of a new virus, not how deadly it might be. That would be a good idea, although in the early days of a potential pandemic, there may not be time to wait and see how virulent a new pathogen is before alerting the world that it needs to respond...