On Saturday United States president Barack Obama declared swine flu a national emergency.
In Devon, health experts are attempting to contain a flu outbreak by shutting a school attended by Britain's youngest swine flu patient - a 12-year-old girl.
The vaccine covers two subtypes of flu A and one of flu B, and these same are the same ones we are seeing in the population.
In this respect if we compare the 1918 Spanish flu, a swine flu variant (largest human killer of all time that took up to 100 million lives) and the 2009 Swine Flu, we see that a drugs cure would come far too late and most of us (between 300milion and over 1 billion worldwide is estimated) would be dead.
It is important to note that you do not get the flu after receiving a flu shot.
Reserves are also retained to pay for for unexpected events such as a flu pandemic or a foot and mouth outbreak.
Much of the running commentary on Twitter is a reaction to news events, so when a flu epidemic becomes a national news story, the number of people talking about it spikes, regardless of their own health status.
Those who should not be vaccinated include persons with a severe reaction to a previous flu shot, people who developed Guillain- Barre syndrome within 6 weeks of a flu shot, and children less than 6 months of age.
Also under consideration is how the military would operate in the case of a pandemic, like bird flu, a senior military official told CNN.
BEIJING A new strain of bird flu killed a third person in eastern China, state media reported on Wednesday, reviving fears among the public of an epidemic in a country only a decade removed from a devastating outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome.
Only one out of five adults is able to name a single vaccine-treatable disease other than the flu, a recent survey found.
Even though the regular seasonal flu vaccine contains a strain of the A-flu virus group, it will not prevent you from getting sick if you come in contact with the new flu strain.
"We have a medical team within the airline as well as a contingency planning group which has met for the past few years to look at the issue of a flu pandemic, " A British Airways spokeswoman said.
On Saturday, the virus strain was found in a herd of swine in Alberta, Canada, and the animals may have caught the flu from a farmer who recently returned from a trip to Mexico.
World number one Tiger Woods, battling a dose of flu, returned a two-under 69 as he chases a third successive win.
In 2010 during the H1N1 flu epidemic, the FDA warned consumers about a potentially harmful counterfeit anti-flu drug that could be a killer in two respects: It lacked any of the flu-preventing medicine it purported to be while it did contain an antibiotic similar to penicillin that can be lethal to certain people.
How many people who received the vaccine and got the flu had a milder case?
V. and Ebola viruses, in the nineteen-eighties, and the swine-flu scare a few years back.
Swine flu is a contagious respiratory disease that affects pigs and can jump to humans.
The catch, Canadian officials say, is that the animals may have caught the flu from a human.
Swine flu is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza, according to the CDC.
The CDC describes swine flu as a contagious respiratory disease that affects pigs.
CNN: Inaccurate 'swine' flu label hurts industry, pork producers say
The flu has a nasty habit of jumping the species barrier, hopping to humans from both pigs and chickens.
Swine flu is a respiratory disease which is caused by a strain of the influenza type A virus known as H1N1.
This is in contrast to seasonal H1N1 flu where a Tamiflu resistant strain emerged last year and is now widely circulating.
The reality is, of course, that the flu is a fickle proposition.
FORBES: The Flu Season Is A Shot In The Arm For Vaccine Makers?
She added that, for the majority of people, swine flu was a "mild, self-limiting, often unpleasant infection but nonetheless the vast majority recover".
However, scientists are watching closely to see if the flu poses a substantial risk to public health or could potentially spark a global pandemic.
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