Swine Flu Pedia

The deepening swine flu outbreak led Japan’s government to shut more than 4,000 schools and spurred the World Health Organization to urge drugmakers such as Sanofi- Aventis SA and GlaxoSmithKline Plc to start preparing a vaccine.

Japan shut 4,464 schools in six prefectures, up from 4,043 the central government originally asked to close, the education ministry said by fax today. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan yesterday endorsed a panel’s recommendation that drugmakers develop batches of swine flu vaccine for testing.

The spread in Japan of swine flu may prompt the WHO to declare a pandemic, according to Hitoshi Oshitani, former head of the agency’s Western Pacific region. Japan said its case total jumped to 188 from 4 less than two weeks ago, and Taiwan today reported its first patient infected with the virus known as H1N1, which has sickened about 10,000 people in 40 countries.

“The WHO will have to take the Japanese cases into consideration when deciding whether to raise the pandemic alert,” Oshitani said in a May 18 interview. “Japan is definitely having human-to-human transmission.”

The Geneva-based organization asked drugmakers to speed production of the protective shot for seasonal influenza, which can kill up to 500,000 people a year, while scientists take a few more weeks to select the fastest-growing strain of the virus to form the basis of a pandemic vaccine.

Because Chan adopted the panel’s recommendation, the same group will meet again in a few weeks to review the speed at which pharmaceutical companies are building their seasonal vaccine stockpiles as well as the spread and severity of H1N1.

Based on that assessment, they may recommend drugmakers switch from making seasonal flu vaccines to swine flu ones. Chan will then decide whether to endorse the panel’s advice.

Source from Bloomberg