For years those concerned about the consequences of an influenza pandemic from an exceptionally virulent flu virus, like A/H5N1 (“bird flu”) have despaired about motivating business, government and neighbors to take it seriously enough to make serious preparations. It’s understandable. There’s are a lot of potential catastrophes competing for our attention and while each can be made plausible if we can get someone to listen long enough, it’s rare we can do this. As I said, too much competition. Now that a real life influenza pandemic has arrived, the concern of some is that the public isn’t being told how bad this could become, possibly even 1918 level. My view is different. In terms of stimulating genuine pandemic preparedness, I think we are extremely lucky to have a pandemic that so far is nowhere near worst case scenario (and let’s be clear: it isn’t anywhere near worst case). The pandemic is no longer theoretical. It is here and tangible. And it is having some tangible effects in unlikely places, like hedge funds. Hedge funds?

Although talk of the swine flu has largely been out of the media for the past few weeks, a rush of new cases of the H1N1 virus is expected to hit financial centers in the fall and winter ” and organizations, and in particular hedge funds, need to be well prepared for a pandemic.
Bob Guilbert, managing director of marketing and products at Eze Castle Integration (booth 1804), which provides outsourced IT technology and services for hedge funds, says his firm has been taking a proactive approach to the pandemic.

“We’ve drafted our own response plan which we’ve issued to all our employees. The plan takes a look at if they’re ill, how to get checked out; if they travel to countries with the virus, what procedures they should follow. And if the company is in a situation of a pandemic, it maps out procedures for working remotely, etc,” he says.

[snip]

Hedge funds in particular must make sure they have a solid plan in place, he adds, since they must conduct business during trading hours. They need to assess how they are going to stay operational if the virus sidelines their employees.

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24 June 2009 07:00 GMT

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This guidance is to help employers with employees in OSHA’s Lower Risk (Caution) Zone: those employees who have minimal occupational contact with the general public and other coworkers (for example, office employees).

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By Geoff Kirbyson, Winnipeg Free Press

WINNIPEG — The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs has declared a state of emergency over the H1N1 flu pandemic, a move it hopes will rattle the cages of the province and the federal government and cause them to spring into action to combat the potentially deadly virus.

AMC Grand Chief Ron Evans said he and his fellow chiefs want to ensure government officials are fully aware of the devastating impact the H1N1 virus is having in their communities throughout the province.

“The governments need to step up. There is no plan in place. Nobody wants to accept responsibility for First Nations. There is very little combatting the H1N1 pandemic. Our people are sick,” Evans said at a press conference at the AMC’s downtown headquarters Wednesday.

The AMC’s desperate call for action came as the province announced the number of confirmed H1N1 cases in Manitoba jumped by 163, bringing the total to 458. As of Monday, 37 patients with the most severe flu-like symptoms have been put on ventilators in intensive care units.

Evans and 11 other chiefs decried the province’s inability to complete even the most simple of tasks on a timely basis — getting hand sanitizers into the communities that needed them — describing it as “a political and bureaucratic nightmare.”

Part of the problem is that commonly used hand sanitizer products can contain upward of 60 per cent alcohol and there was concern among health officials as well as some First Nations chiefs, that the sanitizers could be misused for intoxication.

Anne-Marie Robinson, assistant deputy minister of Health Canada’s First Nations and Inuit health branch, told a Senate committee of discussions between chiefs and public health officials about sending alcohol-based products into communities with addiction problems because there have been “rare” cases where it has been problematic. Robinson would not disclose which reserves had been involved in the discussions and never linked the talks with the “difficulty” she acknowledged was experienced in getting hand sanitizer to some of the chiefs who had asked for it.

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The HHS on Tuesday announced its decision to award a $35 million contract to a U.S. company using “insect cell technology” to develop flu vaccines, AFP/Google.com reports (AFP/Google.com, 6/23). CQ HealthBeat reports: “If the Food and Drug Administration approves the new technology [to be safe and effective], Connecticut-based Protein Sciences Corp. will establish the capability to produce a finished vaccine within 12 weeks of a pandemic’s onset and manufacture at least 50 million doses in the following six months.”

Unlike the conventional method of using chicken eggs to grow flu vaccines – a process that can take four to six months – “[t]he new technology, known as recombinant influenza vaccine, places a gene from a flu virus into an insect virus that can multiply quickly in insect cells, which are then purified for use in a human vaccine,” according to CQ HealthBeat. “The cells can be frozen, which would facilitate rapid production of large quantities of vaccine for use against both seasonal and pandemic flu” (Stephenson, CQ HealthBeat, 6/23).

“The technology has advanced in recent years to a point that we believe it could help meet a surge in demand for U.S.-based vaccine for seasonal and pandemic flu,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a written statement. “We want to use the technology to help our nation respond to emerging infectious diseases” (HHS release, 6/23).

HHS’ announcement came one day after creditors filed a petition to force Protein Sciences into involuntary “bankruptcy and liquidation, saying they were owed $11.7 million,” the New York Times reports. The article continues, “The series of events raises questions about whether the government is entrusting part of the nation’s influenza defense to a financially shaky or untrustworthy company” (Pollack, New York Times, 6/23).

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– 8 confirmed cases in Wales, including 3 new cases: – A 19 year old female from Monmouthshire linked to a confirmed case of swine flu in Cambridge. She has been offered antiviral medicine and is recovering. The NPHS has identified three close contacts who are all are well. – A 20 year old male from Torfaen linked to a confirmed case of swine flu in Bristol. He has been offered antiviral medicine and is recovering. The NPHS has identified one close contact that has tested negative for swine flu.

– 160 people have been under investigation in Wales. Of these, swine flu has been confirmed in 8 cases (see above) and ruled out in 134 cases, leaving 18 still under investigation. All of these are displaying, or have displayed, mild symptoms.

– Of the 18 people under investigation, seven were well when first identified, but reported recent flu-like symptoms following travel to affected areas. Blood tests are being undertaken on these individuals to see if they had the flu and to help the NPHS understand the pattern of the disease from the past. Their symptoms may or may not have been due to swine flu. Testing will be conducted in a number of weeks to check whether these people did have swine flu – scientifically it won’t work before that. Investigations have shown that people they had close contact with did not catch flu from them when they were ill.

– No further details will be confirmed or denied about cases in order to protect their right to confidentiality.

– There are now 2,908 laboratory confirmed cases in the UK – 8 cases in Wales, 647 cases in Scotland, 2236 cases in England and 17 in Northern Ireland.

– One person with swine flu in the UK – a case in Scotland – has died. The patient had underlying health conditions.

– Swine flu cases have been confirmed in 99 countries. For the latest international figures for the spread of swine flu, visit the website of the World Health Organization at www.who.int

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Novavax, Inc. (Nasdaq: NVAX) announced publication of the preclinical study results that supported the clinical development of the company’s investigational VLP vaccine against the H3N2, H1N1 and B influenza strains. The study, which was conducted by scientists from the University of Pittsburgh, Center for Vaccine Research and Novavax, was published in the June 24, 2009 online issue of PLoS ONE. The vaccine contains three VLPs mixed together in a single formulation; each made up of the hemagglutinin (HA), neuraminidase (NA) and matrix 1 (M1) proteins from the representative strains. These proteins are important for broad protection against influenza, which is responsible for nearly 200,000 hospitalizations and 36,000 deaths in the U.S. each year. The vaccine is currently in Phase 2 clinical testing.

In this study, mice and ferrets received intramuscular injections of VLP vaccine which induced HAI antibodies against all three influenza strains represented in the vaccine and against a variety of drifted strains. All of the ferrets who received a vaccine dose of 15 mcg/strain, the dose used for currently licensed vaccines, developed HAI titers greater than or equal to 1:40. This level of antibody has been shown to be important for protection against flu in human studies of influenza vaccines. In addition, approximately 50% of ferrets developed HAI titers greater than or equal to 1:40 against drifted H3N2 strains from the 1999, 2002, and 2005 influenza seasons. The vaccine was also protective, reducing the amount of influenza virus in the nose of ferrets that were challenged with the H3N2 strain from the 2005-6 season.

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CEL-SCI CORPORATION (NYSE AMEX: CVM) announced that it has filed a provisional U.S. patent application covering its L.E.A.P.S.(TM) immune therapy drugs (vaccines) for the prevention/treatment of H1N1, swine, bird flu, Influenza A and/or evolving mutants or variants of these viruses. Some experts believe that by the next flu season the swine flu virus will have evolved and/or combined with other viruses to create a much more lethal new virus. That is what happened in the case of the Spanish flu pandemic. CEL-SCI’s efforts to fight this virus are focused on using conserved epitopes from essential proteins to be found in the A influenza virus for H1N1, H1N5, swine, bird flu and Spanish influenza to create an effective vaccine/treatment that could potentially fight such a mutant virus.

Geert Kersten, Chief Executive Officer of CEL-SCI said, “By filing this provisional patent in the U.S., we are preserving our rights to file patents on these inventions and for their use world-wide either as an injected vaccine before a person is infected or exposed or as a therapeutic vaccine for treatment.”

Experimental work has been initiated on these various methods of use and applications for the A influenza vaccines. These L.E.A.P.S. vaccines, when used individually or together, are expected to induce antigen specific immune response(s) which, based on other L.E.A.P.S. animal tests in multiple disease models will hopefully lead to a protective immune response.

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Iraqi health authorities confirmed yesterday that six people recently returned from the US have tested positive for H1N1 epidemic or swine flu, making this the first lab confirmed cases in the country. Iraq’s Health Minister Saleh Al-Hasnawi told a news conference reported by Reuters that: “Today, six cases of this epidemic flu, H1N1, have been diagnosed in our ministry’s central lab.

The six female patients, all members of the Iraqi women’s national basketball team had been competing in Chicago, US, and flew back on 20 June. A seventh member of the team is also infected but this was discovered in neighbouring Jordan, where the team stopped on their return to Iraq, so she is being treated there.

The health minister mentioned another confirmed case of swine flu in a member of the US military-led multinational force but gave no further details other than the case had been confirmed on Wednesday.

Iraq does not yet feature on the latest swine flu global update from the World Health Organization which as of yesterday morning, 24 June, reported 55,867 global confirmed cases of novel H1N1 swine flu including 238 deaths.

The United States continues to dominate the WHO figures, with 21,449 total confirmed cases, including 87 deaths.

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The Associated Press

Lewis and Clark County and Butte-Silver Bow each recorded its first case of swine flu Monday.

The Lewis and Clark County patient was not identified by age or gender. Beth Cottingham, a registered nurse with the Lewis and Clark City-County Health Department, says the patient is doing well and is recovering.

Butte-Silver Bow Health Officer Terri Hocking says a 34-year-old Butte woman has been infected with the swine flu virus.

Hocking says the woman sought treatment for a high fever on Friday and later developed other symptoms. Test results confirming the virus came back Monday.

The woman is said to be recovering nicely with no complications.

Hocking says the woman had not been out of town recently, which indicates she may have caught the virus in Butte.