Overseas travel business battered by flu pandemic
June 21, 2009 by fluoutbreak · Leave a Comment
(ChinaPost.com.tw) – Taiwan’s travel agencies, who still have not recovered from the global financial storm, have been left reeling even further with the World Health Organization’s declaration of a global pandemic of the A(H1N1) influenza virus, which has frightened many local people into avoiding foreign travel.
According to the latest Tourism Bureau statistics, only a few first-stop overseas destinations such as South Korea, Britain, Palau and Australia, enjoyed growth in the number of travelers from Taiwan in May thanks to the incentives that included favorable exchange rates, visa-free privileges and convenient flight services.
The number of Taiwanese travelers to Japan, which attracts over 1 million Taiwanese visitors each year, had only 80,382 visits by this group in May, marking a drop of 35.41 percent from the same month of the previous year, the statistics show.
Arrayit Corporation Addresses Flu Pandemic
June 19, 2009 by fluoutbreak · Leave a Comment
Arrayit Corporation (OTCBB: ARYC), a leading manufacturer of products and services for disease prevention, treatment and cure, announced that its microarray-based diagnostic test, patented under the trade name Variation Identification Platform (VIP), is ready for manufacture and distribution. A breakthrough screening test using VIP will allow clinicians and researchers to test and detect the H1N1 swine flu virus in population wide studies.
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on June 11, that the threat level of the H1N1 swine flu virus is now a global pandemic. This news is ideally timed with Arrayit Corporation’s release of its patented VIP screening test.
The Arrayit test will allow researchers and clinicians to detect the presence of the new H1N1 virus in mass numbers of flu patients, and to distinguish this threatening mutated strain from less harmful variants. Arrayit’s first supplies will be sent to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta to be approved for use in the USA. Shortly thereafter, the H1N1 test kits will be made available for emergency use by licensed clinics, laboratories and other health care organizations worldwide.
By Thursday evening, we’ll be in first official flu pandemic in 41 years
June 10, 2009 by fluoutbreak · Leave a Comment
WHO set to declare Phase Six at emergency meeting in Geneva.
Finally. Tomorrow, Thursday, June 11, 2009, the World Health Organization is expected to relent and finally declare what the world already knows; namely, that we are in the beginning of the first honest-to-God flu pandemic since the 1968 Hong Kong H3N2 influenza pandemic.
Dr. Margaret Chan, the head of the WHO, has been working with nations to make sure a move to Phase Six does not create some sort of bureaucratic nightmare. Also, there has been concern that a move to officially declare a pandemic would provoke some sort of panic.
I think the WHO is seriously underestimating the ability of the world’s population to filter that news and absorb it quietly, without panic and without fanfare. The world already suspects that we are in panflu status; telling them they are correct will do far more to reassure people there is no coverup going on than to maintain a Phase Five status that is clearly obsolete.
There have been numerous articles regarding the collective inability of the world’s animal health and public health professionals to look for the obvious (hogs) when doing their disease surveillance, and instead become preoccupied with avian flu that is still a threat, just not THE threat right now.
And that is very much a mystery, as we all go back to our Powerpoints and update them feverishly for swine flu. While updating one of my roughly one thousand Powerpoints on the topic, I couldn’t help but notice that one slide showed a hog as plain as day, sitting in some Oriental mud puddle, with a chart explaining how pigs are the proverbial “mixing vessel” for flus.
If we always mention the pig, then why were we not looking at them more closely? because we were spending more time swabbing dusk and tern behinds in the Alaskan tundra than we were swabbing hog nostrils in Wisconsin and Mexico.
I mention Wisconsin because that state has been a veritable incubator of swine flu. At last count, some 2,200 cases of human swine H1 infection were reported to the CDC. This outpaces California, Texas, Illinois, New York and Florida.
What is fascinating is when you look back at the dispersion of the 1946-49 maybe-pandemic of H1N1. the first big area to be impacted by that epidemic was: The western and central Great Lakes states. That would include Wisconsin and Illinois. If you add up their swine H1 exposure, those two states account for nearly one-third of all US confirmed swine H1 cases. One-third. And the last time I looked, neither state borders Mexico, previously considered to be Ground Zero in all this.
I say “previously considered” because someone needs to formulate a theory as to why Wisconsin is the nation’s swine flu capital, while not producing a single human death (so far) from the virus. Why is 2009′s flu pattern mimicking that of 1946-48′s? Somebody get a study going on that one, pronto.
I’ll have more on that later. For now, rest assured that by evening drive tomorrow, and thus on the network news shows, we will be at Phase Six. And Americans, at least, will go on about their business.
Flu Pandemic Likely To Strike UK In The Autumn Says Expert
June 1, 2009 by fluoutbreak · Leave a Comment
A leading expert has warned that the UK can expect to be hit by a swine flu pandemic in the autumn when students go back to school and university. John Oxford, professor of virology at St Bartholomew’s (Barts) hospital in London said on Sunday that the outbreak will strike before a vaccine is available, reported the Guardian.
Senate Approves Supplemental Spending Bill With Funds For Flu Pandemic
May 25, 2009 by fluoutbreak · Leave a Comment
The Senate on Thursday voted 86-3 to approve a $91.3 billion fiscal year 2009 supplemental war appropriations bill (HR 2346) that includes $1.5 billion for influenza pandemic preparedness, the AP/Detroit Free Press reports (Taylor, AP/Detroit Free Press, 5/21). The House already has approved a $96..7 billion version of the measure (H Res 434) (Sanchez, CongressDaily, 5/22). A conference committee to reconcile the two bills will not meet until after lawmakers return from the Memorial Day recess (Stanton/Dennis, Roll Call, 5/21). Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said, “There are very few things that need to be worked out in conference” before the measure is passed (CongressDaily, 5/22).
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