Health authorities have pointed out that this swine flu strain has never been seen.
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An H3N2 flu strain has been the most dominant and has been especially hard on the elderly.
Already, there are diagnostic tests for the flu strain and effective (though costly) antiviral drugs to treat it.
This particular flu strain has lead to more severe disease with more deaths and hospitalizations than in recent years.
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Health officials had returned to Edgar's sample only after cases of the new flu strain were spotted around the country.
Even if an outbreak of a new human flu strain were quickly contained, it could still have drastic economic consequences.
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By denying the flu strain further opportunities to infect humans, this swift action may have prevented a pandemic, says the WHO.
The deaths were not caused by an epidemic or the new H7N9 bird flu strain, and nearby chemical factories were being investigated, they added.
Saturday, China reported a 7-year-old Beijing girl is the latest person to become infected with the H7N9 flu strain, bringing the total to 44.
Health authorities are testing a family infected by H7N9 in Shanghai for human-to-human transmission of the new bird flu strain, The Beijing News reports.
Mr Fukuda said officials and drug manufacturers were investigating how to speed up the process of developing a vaccine against the H1N1 swine flu strain.
In a report issued Friday, CRT Capital analyst Mike Derchin assessed the potential impact of the newest flu strain and said investors should not be worried.
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This season's flu shot seemed to do little to protect people over 65 from the worst and most dominant flu strain spreading around, a small government study found.
How well the vaccine works can vary based on your age and health, as well as how good the "match" of the vaccine is to this year's flu strain.
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.
The news came as officials in the United States and Mexico, where the outbreak of the H1N1 virus started, were voicing hope that the worst of the new flu strain may be over.
Worries that an outbreak of a new bird-flu strain in China will stifle domestic air-travel demand sent shares of the nation's airlines falling sharply Friday, triggering a broader selloff in airline and travel stocks world-wide.
Last year's flu-shot shortage was scary enough, but now scientists see the specter of a bona fide pandemic if the bird-flu strain known has H5N1 were to mutate into an infection that could spread to people.
Chan said she would recommend that vaccine manufacturers proceed with mass production of an inoculation against the new swine flu strain as soon as they finish production of seasonal vaccine, which she estimated would be complete in about two weeks.
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President Barack Obama spoke with Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Saturday afternoon to discuss both countries' "efforts to limit the spread of the 2009 H1N1 flu strain and the importance of close U.S.-Mexican cooperation, " the White House said in a statement.
In other domestic news, the World Health Organization is watching out for mutations and possible human-to-human transmission of the new H7N9 bird flu strain after two family cluster cases - a father-and-son cluster and a husband-and-wife cluster - were detected in Shanghai, China Daily reports.
She first injects a sample of "wild virus"-- in this case, H1N1 virus she got from the CDC, originally culled from a child who was infected in California this spring -- and then injects a sample of another flu strain that's known for its ability to rapidly multiply in eggs.
In Asia, more than 120 people have been sickened, and 23 are dead, from a potent strain of bird flu that has the frightening markings of a potential pandemic strain.
"It seems that this year's flu vaccine is not nearly as effective as we would like among people over the age of 65 for one particular strain of flu, " Frieden said Thursday.
Also, says Bocchini, this is a new strain of flu, and no one in the population would be expected to be immune.
More recently, there have been worries about Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and a strain of flu known as H5N1 in 2008, though neither created the pandemic researchers feared they might.
And Longini says the apparent new strain of swine flu appears to be here to stay.
This spring a new strain of avian flu led to bird culls in some parts of the country.
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