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Dairy cows cannot be moved between states without testing for the highly pathogenic avian influenza, U.S. officials announced on April 24. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a federal order that says “prior to interstate movement, dairy cattle are required to receive a negative test for Influenza A virus.” A strain of the highly pathogenic avian influenza A, H5N1, has been spreading across the country since first being detected in cows in March. The influenza is commonly known as the bird flu. At this point, no beef cattle are known to have been infected with the virus. The order,...

Flu activity is on the rise as hospitalizations and emergency room visits for COVID-19 are declining, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently reported. Some parts of the country are seeing increased flu activity, though it’s still low in Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, lab reports indicate. Levels of flu were stable in other parts of the country. On the whole, visits to outpatient clinics for flu care expanded by 2.3%. Four regions in the Southeast and West part had slight increases in flu hospitalizations, but the hospitalizations were low in other parts of...

As global markets continue to tank, with Wall Street trading halted after the Dow Jones Industrial Average dove more than 2000 points, and as at least 34 U.S. states and the District of Columbia reporting infections of the novel coronavirus President Donald Trump on Monday doubled down on downplaying the crisis, blaming the news media and the Democratic Party for hyping the outbreak and repeating the risk is still "low to the average American." "The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus...

As the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provided a grim reminder of the toll that the flu has taken on Americans. The CDC said that so far this season, about 20,000 people have died of the flu, including 136 children. The CDC's most recent flu report says that as of February 29, hospitalization rates among children aged 4 and under were the highest on record at this point in the season, surpassing rates reported during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. The 136 children's deaths also mark the highest on record since...

Cue the pro-vaccine crowd's b.s. arguments as to why this is doesn't matter and we should all keep taking the risk shooting up our children in the hopes this won't happen to us. Via Daily Mail: A five-year-old girl has died in hospital three days after developing a strain of the flu that she was vaccinated against – as a deadly outbreak of the virus continues to sweep across the country. Keira Driscoll was prescribed steroids and a nebulizer at a Quick Care clinic after she started feeling unwell with a cough and a fever at her home in Clark...

Milwaukee, WI – Researchers from the Medical College of Wisconsin, the Children's Research Institute, and the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin have developed a rapid, automated system to differentiate strains of influenza. The related report by Beck et al, "Development of a rapid automated influenza A, influenza B, and RSV A/B multiplex real-time RT-PCR assay and its use during the 2009 H1N1 swine-origin influenza virus (S-OIV) epidemic in Milwaukee, Wisconsin," appears in the January 2010 issue of the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics. In pandemic infection, such as the present H1N1 influenza outbreak, rapid automated tests are needed in order to make...

LOS ANGELES - The first confirmed case of Influenza A in Los Angeles County has been reported to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. The diagnosed patient is a child living in the eastern San Fernando Valley. "I urge everyone who has not already done so to get a flu shot. Be prepared this year and protect yourself and your family. There is still time to get a flu vaccination," said Jonathan E. Fielding, the county's Public Health director and health officer. "Vaccination is especially important for all persons at highest risk of serious complications of the flu,...

A recently evolved avian flu virus could mutate and become transmissible between humans, touching off a massive global pandemic, agreed public health officials from more than 20 countries in the Western Pacific region who gathered yesterday. With one small genetic adjustment in Influenza A, or H5N1, millions of people could die, warned World Health Organization Regional Director for the Western Pacific Shigeru Omi. Omi, speaking at the regional WHO meeting in Noumea, New Caledonia, in the South Pacific, called for health ministers and representatives to launch an all-out war on the deadly strain, which has killed at least 57 people....