In his weekly radio and Internet address, President Obama said his administration is acting "quickly and aggressively" to avert "the potential for a pandemic" of the new flu strain. In Hong Kong, officials quarantined 350 people inside a hotel after a guest came down with the first reported case of the virus in Asia. The ailing guest, a tourist from Mexico, was hospitalized in stable condition.
France reported its first two confirmed cases on Friday.
Speaking on TF1 television, French Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot said the patients, a 49-year-old man and a 24-year-old woman, both recently returned from Mexico. They have been hospitalized at two Paris hospitals and are "doing well," she said.
Bachelot also said another patient hospitalized at a third Paris hospital likely has the virus, but it has not been officially confirmed yet. Bachelot said all three had received anti-viral treatments.
She said the "form (of the virus) in our country appears benign" but did not rule out that the French cases could prove more serious. "This virus has killed (people) in Mexico. ... Therefore we must take all necessary precautions."
In the United States, Obama used his Saturday address to highlight efforts his administration is making to curtail spread of the disease, but also to reassure Americans. "The good news is that the current strain of H1N1 can be defeated by a course of antiviral treatment that we already have on hand," the president said.
The government had 50 million courses of the treatment on hand, Obama said, and has begun making deliveries to states from that stockpile. He added that federal officials have purchased 13 million more doses of the medicine over the last few days.
In his address, the president referred to the virus by its scientific name, H1N1, and avoided the more commonly used "swine flu." Some analysts have blamed swine flu panic for a steep drop in pork prices this week. According to survey by the Harvard Opinion Research Program at the Harvard School of Public Health, 13% of Americans believe, incorrectly, that it is possible to get the flu strain from eating pork.
The virus was nicknamed swine flu because it originated from pigs. But it has now mutated into a form that passes easily between people. Obama noted in his Saturday address that the contagion has nothing to do with animals.
"This is a new strain of the flu virus, and because we haven't developed an immunity to it, it has more potential to cause us harm," the president said. "Unlike the various strains of animal flu that have emerged in the past, it's a flu that is spreading from human to human. This creates the potential for a pandemic, which is why we are acting quickly and aggressively."
Schools across the country continued to close because of concerns over actual or suspected cases. More than 430 schools were closed as of Friday, affecting as many as 250,000 student in Texas, Alabama, New York, California, South Carolina, Connecticut, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona, Ohio, Utah, Washington state, Michigan, Maine and Maryland. That was about 100 more schools reported closed than reported on Thursday.
While emphasizing at a Friday news conference that the closures to date represent a tiny fraction of the almost 100,000 schools in the country, Education Secretary Arne Duncan instructed teachers, parents and students to be prepared if their school does close.
To teachers, Duncan said: "Think about reworking upcoming lesson plans so students can do their schoolwork at home if necessary."
To parents: "Learn about what they're learning at school. Keep them on task."
And to students: "Don't fall behind your peers at other schools that are still in session. Keep working hard."
A flight from Germany to Washington was diverted to Boston because a passenger complained of flu-like symptoms.
Airport spokesman Phil Orlandella says United Airlines Flight 903 was being diverted Friday afternoon after a 53-year-old female passenger told flight attendants about her symptoms. He said the flight from Munich had 245 passengers and six crewmembers. The flight had been scheduled to land at Washington Dulles International Airport later Friday.
It isn't yet clear what caused the woman's symptoms or whether she might be suffering from swine flu.
Still, the flu was beginning to look a little less ominous. New York City officials reported Friday that the virus still has not spread beyond a few schools.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the illness so far had proven to be "a relatively minor annoyance." City health officials said they have found few signs that the local outbreak of swine flu is spreading beyond a few pockets or getting more dangerous. The city has 50 cases, the most of any city in the United States.
Meanwhile, prescriptions for antiviral, flu-fighting drugs increased nine-fold on Monday compared to daily sales for the previous month, according to the healthcare information company SDI. Sales began to go up on Friday, April 24, the day after the CDC reported cases of the H1N1 influenza in the United States. They have remained high since then, SDI reports.
Clinics and hospital emergency rooms in New York, California and some other states are seeing a surge in patients with coughs and sneezes that might have been ignored before the outbreak.
The World Health Organization is working on creating a vaccine against the H1N1 viru, says Marie-Paul Kieny, WHO's Director of the Initiative for Vaccine Research.
"Vaccines are an extremely effective protection against influenza," she says. In the case of seasonal influenza, vaccines protect millions of people each year against death.
Therefore, it is "critically important" to create a vaccine against the H1N1 virus, she says.
However, that takes time. Testing by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shown that the flu virus for next year's seasonal influenza, which is currently in the early stages of production, does not provide protection against this newly-evolved strain.
Creating a new flu vaccine from scratch will take between four to six months and there's really no way to speed up the process and still make it safe and ensure the vaccine is effective, Kieny says.
"We think 600 million doses is achievable in a six-month time frame" from that fall start, Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Craig Vanderwagen told lawmakers.
"I don't want anybody to have false expectations. The science is challenging here," Vanderwagen told reporters. "Production can be done, robust production capacity is there. It's a question of can we get the science worked on the specifics of this vaccine."
Worldwide, the number of confirmed cases reached 659, according to the Associated Press, citing data from the Centers for Disease Control, WHO and government officials. Officially, the WHO lists the worldwide count of confirmed swine flu cases at 615.
In the U.S., the confirmed number of swine flu cases has topped 150. The CDC confirms 141, and states are confirming at least a dozen more. Cases now are confirmed in New York, Texas, California, South Carolina, Kansas, Massachusetts, Indiana, Ohio, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Delaware, Maine, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Virginia, Florida, Connecticut, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska and Minnesota.
The Harvard School of Public Health survey shows Americans appear to be responding to calls to increase hand washing. Fifty-nine percent of Americans said they were washing their hands or using hand sanitizer more frequently.
Despite public health officials' messages that only people who are sick with flu-like symptoms need to stay home, 15% of Americans said they were avoiding areas where many people are gathered, such as sporting events, malls or public transportation.
Other responses include 8% who said they were wearing face masks; 4% who have kept children home from school or daycare; and 1% who said they were getting a prescription for antiviral medications.
The survey was conducted on Wednesday, April 29, on a representative national sample of 1,067 adults. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
In global news:
No new deaths from swine flu were reported overnight in Mexico's capital for the first time since the emergency was declared a week ago, said Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard.
No comments:
Post a Comment