virus

That Stubborn Whooping Cough

By |2017-02-10T09:51:06-07:00July 31st, 2012|Prevention|

Whooping Cough is making headlines again – with more than 18,000 cases in the U.S. and 600 cases so far this year in AZ.  You might wonder why we continue to have lots of whooping cough cases in the US and AZ when the other vaccine preventable diseases are real rare (e.g. measles, mumps etc.).  [...]

H7N3

By |2017-02-10T09:51:07-07:00June 29th, 2012|Preparedness, Prevention|

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 [...]

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A Virus is Born

By |2017-02-10T09:51:25-07:00December 5th, 2011|General, Preparedness|

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 [...]

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Contagion

By |2017-02-10T09:51:35-07:00September 9th, 2011|General, Preparedness, Prevention|

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 [...]

FDA Approves Vaccines for the 2011-2012 Influenza Season

By |2011-07-25T08:48:43-07:00July 25th, 2011|General, Prevention|

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 [...]

Seasonal Flu News

By |2017-02-10T09:52:12-07:00August 9th, 2010|Prevention|

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 [...]

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