Just in time for the holidays, we’re got our first lab confirmed case of influenza – actually two cases. Influenza has probably been in the state for a while now, but we don’t officially start counting the cases until there is a case confirmed at our lab. The vaccine was approved this summer and fights 3 [...]
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 [...]
Respiratory syncytial virus (or RSV) is a respiratory virus that mainly affects little kids- and circulates around this time of year. There’s no vaccine- but clinicians can give a preventive antibody treatment to folks at greatest risk (e.g. premature infants). It spreads mostly in the winter (like influenza) but flu and RSV don’t usually peak at [...]
Pretty much everybody knows that getting an annual influenza vaccine protects them from getting influenza- but fewer people realize that getting vaccinated saves other people’s lives as well. That’s because if a large percentage of the population takes advantage of the vaccine (called herd immunity) we can reduce the overall spread of the disease- and save [...]
New testing equipment at the state lab is going to help us with flu tracking this fall and dramatically speed up testing for Tuberculosis. The instrument called the Gene Xpert looks for DNA mutations – we can tell if a TB case is resistant to certain antibiotics. For instance, on specific mutation is a marker for rifampin [...]
This is the time of year that public health folks start watching the flu reports from the southern hemisphere. We’re watching for a couple of things – the circulating strains and how it’s spreading. The Australian Government Department of Health is reporting 6 times as many cases as they had at this time last season. [...]
The FDA approved the 2011-2012 influenza vaccine this week. The strains in this year’s vaccine were recommended by the CDC and the World Healthy Organization after studying virus samples collected from around the world to find the influenza viruses that are the most likely to cause illness during the upcoming flu season. The strains selected [...]
The flu vaccine that you and your family got earlier will pay off over the next couple of weeks, it's going gangbusters right now. We monitor several different indicators to determine the level of flu activity in the state and all are on the rise right now including increased school nurse and health care clinic visits for [...]
With last year’s pandemic, we saw how influenza can be unpredictable in terms of who it affects most, when it occurs, and what strains will circulate. This season we are back to a more usual flu season, at least so far. Our first laboratory-confirmed cases were detected earlier than most years (at the end of [...]
Last year at this time the new H1N1 flu virus was going gangbusters. Loads of Arizonans were getting sick (especially kids), the vaccine was still in short supply. The county health departments were prioritizing which doctors could get the vaccine. What a difference a year makes. Flu activity across the country is light (so far), [...]
