HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt announced today that the department has awarded contracts totaling $132.5 million to three vaccine makers for the advanced development of H5N1 influenza vaccines using an immune system booster called an adjuvant. An adjuvant is a substance that may be added to a vaccine to increase the body?s immune response to the vaccine?s active ingredient, called antigen.
In a study of nonhuman primates infected with the influenza virus that killed 50 million people in 1918, an international team of scientists has found a critical clue to how the virus killed so quickly and efficiently.
Japanese officials confirmed that bird flu caused the deaths of more than two-thousand chickens at a farm 900 kilometers southwest of Tokyo. The officials have not determined whether this particular strain of bird flu is the feared H5N1 or another less deadly form.
The Indonesian health officials have confirmed about two women died after contracting bird flu, raising the country’s total number of human deaths to 61.
A 37-year-old Indonesian woman has died of bird flu, taking the country’s human death toll to 59, a hospital official said in Indonesia. The woman, from Serpong town in western Java, had been diagnosed as positive for the virus earlier this week.
Vietnam government reported that H5N1 bird flu is spreading and spread of avian bird flu virus has reached to Vietnam’s largest urban area of Ho Chi Minh City. 20 chickens were found dead on a farm in Vinh Long province confirmed the presence of the virus.
Chinese and American scientists have developed a new H5N1 vaccine virus for researchers and companies that want to develop or produce the H5N1 bird flu vaccine for human use, a senior Chinese health official has announced.
The Ministry of Health in Indonesia has confirmed an additional two cases of human infection with the H5N1 avian influenza virus.
Two Indonesians have been hospitalized in less than a week with H5N1 avian influenza infections, the country?s first in more than a month, according to news services. Indonesia?s health ministry told Bloomberg News that a 14-year-old boy who tested positive for the H5N1 virus was being treated at Persahabatan Hospital in Jakarta after showing flulike symptoms on Jan_1.
Hong Kong government officials recently announced that a wild bird found dead near a busy shopping district on Dec_31 tested positive for H5N1 avian influenza.