Is the COVID-19 pandemic over? That question is getting a lot of attention this week, and it's natural to wonder where ADHS stands. In Arizona, however, we look past terminology to the impact of a virus on the health and wellness of our residents. There's no question that COVID-19 remains a state, national, and global [...]
A report out by the CDC this week found that people between 18 and 64 years old make up 61% of all flu-related hospitalizations so far this season in the US. In normal years only about 35% of flu hospitalizations are from this age group. H1N1 (the flu strain we saw circulating in the 2009 flu pandemic) is still the [...]
This week the WHO announced that several people in eastern China are infected with a newly mutated bird influenza virus called H7N9. All are in critical condition and some have died... but importantly the cases don't appear to be linked- meaning it's probably not from human to human transmission (that's good). The World Health Organization website has more detail [...]
Remember the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic? That brand new virus that caused the pandemic was a combination of RNA from four different flu viruses – North American swine influenza, North American avian influenza, human influenza, and swine influenza virus typically found in Asia and Europe. The natural laboratories for new influenza viruses that end up causing pandemics [...]
The CDC confirmed the birth of a new influenza virus in this week’s MMWR Weekly Report. The newborn is named “Swine-origin Triple Reassortant Influenza A (H3N2) (S-OtrH3N2)”. The hybrid virus was found in a handful of school-age kids in Iowa recently- and luckily the kids recovered and none were hospitalized. Nobody outside the initial cluster has been infected [...]
Remember our responses to the 2009-2010 H1N1 Pandemic? One of the reasons why Arizona’s public health responses were so effective was that we had a well researched and tested pandemic readiness plan. But... public health readiness isn’t a static process, and once the pandemic was finished we set out to revise our plan with lessons learned. Over [...]
In all my years in public health this is the first crack I’ve taken at being a movie critic- so give me a little slack on this one. I checked out the new movie called Contagion- and really liked it. I won’t give up too much information and spoil the film, but it’s basically a fictional [...]
The Strategic National Stockpile is a national repository of antibiotics, chemical antidotes, antitoxins, life-support medications, IV administration, airway maintenance supplies, and medical/surgical items which are stored in a few locations around the country. The stockpile is designed to supplement public health agencies in case there’s a national emergency anywhere and at anytime within the U.S. [...]
The FDA approved this year’s (2010-2011) flu vaccine for the US. This year's shot will protect folks from 3 strains of influenza including the pandemic strain from last year. The technical terms for the strains in this year’s shot are the “A/California/7/09 (H1N1)-like virus (i.e. pandemic virus”; the “A/Perth /16/2009 (H3N2)-like virus”; and the “B/Brisbane/60/2008-like [...]
The H1N1 pandemic strain virus turns 1 this month. The first indication that there may be a problem was published in an April 24, 2009 Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report. The CDC announced the new virus in their usual low-key way, with an MMWR lead that said: “On April 17, 2009, CDC determined that two [...]
