H1N1 is a National Emergency- Obama Declares
Posted on 25. Oct, 2009 by Turbo in Buzz
US President, Barack Obama declared swine flu or H1N1 as the National Emergency. According to a statement from White House, Obama signed the declaration. This move will be to assist the nation for better preparedness in case there is an increasing spread of the H1N1 virus infection across US.
World Health Organization had already declared swine flu or H1N1 as pandemic. According to reports about 1000 succumbed to the virus in US and 46 states reported infection. The declaration comes in the wake of fear that the H1N1 virus might spread faster in the winter months. The virus claimed more than 5000 reported deaths across the world and more than 400k people were tested positive so far.
Children require two doses of H1N1 vaccine
Posted on 21. Sep, 2009 by Turbo in Health
US officials say that children might need 2 H1N1 vaccine doses. Tests made with the needle-free Sanofi-Pasteur’s H1N1 vaccine found that children responded to it; however, children aged 10 and over will just need single shot dosage while children 9 years of age might require two shots of the vaccine.
Sanofi had gotten Federal government’s order for about 27.3 million additional units of the H1N1 vaccine.
According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) children aged below 9 years will need two doses of the vaccine spaced at 21 days interval. However, he believes other seasonal flu shots could be given same day as the swine flu vaccine.
About 25 companies across the world are engaged in making H1N1 vaccine, and US ordered from 5 companies: Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, CSL and MedImmune. US had initially ordered for 195 million units of the vaccine from these makers. However, with increase in orders with MedImmune and Sanofi it would become a total of 250 million units of vaccines.
