Free Republic

To the Editor: The Naval Health Research Center serves as the Navy hub for the Department of Defense's Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System (GEIS), in which it monitors influenza-like illness among recruit trainees of all military services, military dependents, and crew members of large Navy ships (population, >1000). The center works in collaboration with the Border Infectious Disease Surveillance Project of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which monitors populations located on the border between California and Mexico. The first two human cases of novel swine-origin influenza A (H1N1) virus (S-OIV), known as swine flu, in...

An unlicensed intravenous form of the antiviral drug Relenza saved the life of a woman with a severe illness resulting from infection by the pandemic H1N1 influenza virus, British doctors reported today in the journal Lancet. Dr. Michael Kidd and Dr. Mervyn Singer of the University College London Hospitals were treating the virus, commonly known as swine flu, in a 22-year-old woman who had contracted it after undergoing chemotherapy for Hodgkin's disease. The woman had increasing shortness of breath, build-up of fluid in both lungs and was progressively deteriorating. Physicians had given her Tamiflu and Relenza, which is normally given...

Students will get free vaccinations. Health clinics will turn into “flu centers” to relieve hospitals. Emergency room statistics will be reported on the Web every day. And schools will close only as a last resort. Girding for a second wave of the swine flu pandemic that has already killed more than 50 people in New York City, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg outlined a strategy on Tuesday that was equal parts infection control and panic control. “It’s natural to imagine a worst-case scenario, but all signs at this point in time do point to an outbreak that will be much more...