flu shot 2021 near me :: Article CreatorInfluenza News
Feb. 29, 2024 — U.S. Flu vaccines are likely to move from quadrivalent to trivalent due to a change in circulating influenza viruses, according to a new ...
Feb. 19, 2024 — The prospect of the worrisome triple threat of COVID, RSV and flu was assuaged last year by the effectiveness of flu vaccines. Two recent studies from the Centers for Disease Control and ...
Jan. 18, 2024 — An exhalation delivery system that uses a patient's own breath to carry the anti-inflammatory compound fluticasone (EDS-FLU) directly to the sinuses reduced chronic sinus infection (sinusitis) ...
Jan. 17, 2024 — Imagine a vaccine that speeds up the production of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that spreads COVID-19. A research team has developed such a vaccine by using preexisting immunity to a ...
Jan. 11, 2024 — Scientists have long known that some viruses and bacteria begin infections by latching first onto sugar molecules on the surfaces of cells lining the sinuses and throat of mammals, including humans. ...
Dec. 21, 2023 — Researchers have identified a previously unrecognized class of antibodies -- immune system proteins that protect against disease -- that appear capable of neutralizing multiple forms of flu virus. ...
Dec. 15, 2023 — New research comparing the viruses that cause the flu and COVID-19 shows that people hospitalized with seasonal influenza also can suffer long-term, negative health effects, especially involving ...
Nov. 27, 2023 — Parents who send their children to child care can breathe a little easier. New research shows that children in daycare were not significant spreaders of ...
Nov. 13, 2023 — Despite national medical guidelines supporting the use of antiviral medications in young children diagnosed with influenza, a new study reports an underuse of the ...
Nov. 13, 2023 — Despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warning this year will be potentially dangerous for respiratory illnesses, a third of Americans are not concerned about the threat, according to ...
Oct. 31, 2023 — Recent preclinical results indicate novel next-generation vaccine candidates protect against multiple strains of influenza and last longer than vaccines currently in ...
Oct. 24, 2023 — Researchers have developed a model that predicts the likely evolution of variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The model predicts which variants can escape human immunity, spread through the population ...
Oct. 10, 2023 — New analysis of the remains of victims of the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, contradicts the widespread belief the flu disproportionately impacted ...
Sep. 29, 2023 — Researchers have developed an improved way to test potential vaccines against bird ...
Sep. 13, 2023 — During a bout of influenza, B cells interact with other immune cells and then take different paths to defend the body. One path is the B cells that differentiate into lung-resident memory B cells, or ...
Sep. 11, 2023 — A new Europe-wide study investigated the prevalence of protozoans, bacteria and viruses potentially pathogenic to humans and domestic animals in birds and bats in varying climatic conditions. The ...
Sep. 5, 2023 — A new study has shown that a subtype of avian flu virus, endemic in poultry farms in China, is undergoing mutational changes, which could increase the risk of the disease being passed on to ...
Aug. 17, 2023 — Scientists found that immune cells present in individuals long before influenza infection predict whether the illness is ...
Aug. 16, 2023 — Researchers have found that molecules in vegetables like broccoli or cauliflower help to maintain a healthy barrier in the lung and ease ...
Aug. 4, 2023 — In temperate climates, like North America and Europe, flu season starts in the fall, peaks in the winter and ends in the spring. While public health officials have generally assumed that influenza is ...
Swine Flu News
Feb. 29, 2024 — U.S. Flu vaccines are likely to move from quadrivalent to trivalent due to a change in circulating influenza viruses, according to a new ...
Feb. 19, 2024 — The prospect of the worrisome triple threat of COVID, RSV and flu was assuaged last year by the effectiveness of flu vaccines. Two recent studies from the Centers for Disease Control and ...
Nov. 16, 2022 — Children with a severe form of epilepsy should be vaccinated against the flu due to the high risk of seizures being triggered by an influenza infection, according to a new ...
Nov. 2, 2022 — Researchers have discovered a high prevalence of COVID-19 co-infections in central Missouri during the 2021-2022 flu season, with a monthly co-infection rate as high as 48 percent among individuals ...
Sep. 7, 2022 — Getting an annual flu shot may be associated with a lower risk of stroke, according to a new ...
Aug. 25, 2022 — A new universal flu vaccine protects against diverse variants of both influenza A and B viruses in mice, according to a new ...
Aug. 16, 2022 — Researchers have found a class of well-known antiviral drugs could be part of a one-two punch to treat seasonal influenza and prevent a flu pandemic when used in combination with antibody ...
July 21, 2022 — Research uses computational modeling to try to understand the body's immune response to avian flu. His latest work finds that the levels of interferon may be responsible for its more severe ...
July 8, 2022 — A new universal flu vaccine protects against influenza B viruses, offering broad defense against different strains and improved immune protection, according to a new ...
June 6, 2022 — In order to quickly detect the presence of the influenza A virus, researchers developed a fluorogenic probe that could bind to the promoter region. A fluorogenic probe uses tiny molecules called ...
June 1, 2022 — Researchers have found a way to block one strain of the influenza virus from accessing a human protein it needs to replicate in cells. The discovery could lead to highly effective ways to treat the ...
May 11, 2022 — Researchers have shown for the first time in mice that heart problems associated with the flu are not caused by raging inflammation in the lungs, as has long been predicted. Instead, the electrical ...
Apr. 13, 2022 — A new study highlights how clinicians can use artificial intelligence and seasonality to screen patients and identify the probability of COVID-19 prior to ...
Apr. 4, 2022 — People with heart failure who received an annual flu shot had lower rates of pneumonia and hospitalization on a year-round basis and a reduction in major cardiovascular events during peak flu season, ...
Mar. 29, 2022 — Scientists have leveraged on a novel vaccine platform to deliver M2e to immune cells. This allowed them to prove that a single shot immunization containing M2e was able to trigger long-lasting immune ...
Mar. 25, 2022 — Adults in hospital who have COVID-19 and the flu at the same time are at much greater risk of severe disease and death compared with patients who have COVID-19 alone or with other viruses, research ...
Feb. 3, 2022 — Researchers have found that children who receive years of season-specific flu vaccines develop antibodies that also provide broader protection against new strains, including those capable of causing ...
Nov. 22, 2021 — Accurately assessing the exposure of a population to a particular virus is difficult because the tools for doing so do not account for the fact that many viruses comprise multiple circulating ...
Oct. 14, 2021 — A cell-based influenza vaccine has effectively provided protection against the flu in children and adolescents, according to a new ...
Oct. 13, 2021 — Poor timing of influenza vaccination campaigns in the semi-arid region of Brazil led to an increase in premature births, lower birth-weight babies and the need to deliver more babies by cesarean ...
Launching An Effective Bird Flu Vaccine Quickly Could Be Tough, Scientists Warn
The bird flu that's now spreading among cows doesn't yet appear to pose an imminent threat to most people. Scientists say the virus would need to mutate significantly to be able to transmit easily from human to human.
But federal health officials say they've started trying to develop a vaccine to protect people just in case a pandemic erupts.
"We've got some preparedness pieces in place that will give us a head start should we need a large-scale vaccination campaign in a pandemic situation," Dawn O'Connell, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Health and Human Services Department, told NPR in an interview this week.
That includes two vaccines made from older, but similar strains of the virus that early testing indicates could protect people, O'Connell said. The government also has stocks of adjuvant, a substance that is used to increase a vaccine's effectiveness, O'Connell said.
"We actually have manufactured small lots of both of the candidates. So we have some to the tune of hundreds of thousands in prefilled syringes and in vials that could be deployed fairly quickly," she said.
The government also has the raw material to make 10 million additional doses within weeks, plus another 125 million doses within about four months, she said.
"You could imagine getting that first 100 million doses is going to be really important and is going to give us a good head start and then we would lean into the manufacturing from there to continue to ramp up," she said.
JIM WATSON / AFP via Getty Images
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AFP via Getty Images
Assistant Health and Human Services Secretary for Preparedness and Response Dawn O'Connell.
No one knows how much of a risk the bird flu poses of causing a human epidemic, and so a vaccine may not become necessary.
Some outside experts agree the U.S. Is well prepared to produce a vaccine. But some infectious disease specialists are skeptical about the nation's preparedness for this potential threat.
"The first thing we have to do is eliminate the happy talk," said Michael Osterholm, who runs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy and the University of Minnesota.
"I think estimates of stockpiles that currently exist and the potential to use them should this emerge into a human pathogen where it's transmitted by humans to humans, have unfortunately been overstated," Osterholm said.
For example, not enough testing has been done yet to know how well the two candidate vaccines would really work, especially since the virus would have likely changed if it becomes a real threat to people, Osterholm said.
"I don't have a lot of faith that those vaccines will offer a great deal of protection," he said.
And even if an effective vaccine was available, most flu vaccines are still produced with old-fashioned technology that relies on growing virus in eggs — this can take months to make enough and can be unpredictable. The country would need more than 600 million doses because everyone would need two shots.
"Given those limitations, I think it's really critical for the federal government to take a much more aggressive posture," said Luciana Borio, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. "We can't afford to falsely reassure ourselves. We need to be more humble."
Borio and others argued the federal government's overly optimistic assessments are sending the wrong message to the public and to Congress, which would have to provide funding to really ramp up vaccine production.
"I do not think we are ready with our vaccine enterprise to be able to respond fast enough," said Rick Bright, who until 2020 worked at the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, a federal agency involved in pandemic research.
"There's a lot of gaps in our preparedness response. We don't have prioritization strategy on who to vaccinate first. We don't have distribution plan in place if we need to distribute vaccines," he said. "So there's a lot of work that needs to be done."
Bright thinks the government should develop a vaccine based on the strain of the virus that recently ratcheted up alarm when it infected a dairy worker in Texas.
"When we're starting with candidate vaccines that are from viruses in 2020 we're already perhaps four years behind the evolution of the virus," Bright said. "I would update those candidate vaccine viruses while we have the time."
The government should also start funding mRNA vaccine development directly, Bright said.
Bright, Osterholm, Borio and others worry that the response illustrates how little the country has learned from previous pandemics like COVID.
"It does feel like Ground Hog Day," said Jennifer Nuzzo, who heads Brown University's Pandemic Center. "We still seem to be stuck in reactive mode. We shouldn't be waiting for evidence that the virus is devastating us. We should be trying to act now to prevent the virus from devastating us."
In the interview with NPR, O'Connell of HHS acknowledged that the country could face problems developing and distributing a vaccine. But she stressed that beyond additional testing of one of the vaccine candidates, drug companies are also developing mRNA vaccines. The federal government is in talks to help with that too, she said.
"While we have a head start and we're not starting flat-footed as we did with COVID, that doesn't mean this is going to be simple and this is going to be easy," she said. "But I am pleased we have some tools to leverage."
In the short term, Nuzzo thinks the country should start vaccinating dairy workers as soon as possible.
"We need to protect farm workers and those exposed to raw milk," said Nuzzo.
That would protect workers' health and possibly help reduce the chances the virus would evolve to spread more easily among people, Nuzzo said.
During a briefing for reporters Wednesday, Vivien Dugan, director of the influenza division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said dairy worker vaccination might begin if any worrisome new changes are detected about the virus, such as changes in its genetic code.
Nuzzo and others said they are alarmed by the dearth of information being released by the federal government about the status of vaccine development and other important issues related to the virus.
"I wish there would be more transparency about what's going on because ultimately if we're ever going to ask people to use vaccines they need to understand the process by which they were generated so they can have confidence in that process. And we cannot do that at the last minute," Nuzzo said. "We saw the challenges of doing that in COVID and I do not want to see us do that again."
During Wednesday's briefing, David Boucher, who directs infectious disease preparedness for the federal Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, said two vaccine companies are already doing further testing of one of the two candidate vaccines.
Copyright 2024 NPR
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