Massachusetts General Hospital has already counted 532 cases of flu among patients, which is more than the Boston hospital saw in any of the previous three flu seasons, spokeswoman Kristen Stanton said Wednesday.
They are more vulnerable to the severe effects of the flu or come into contact more often with this highly contagious virus.
Conservative peer Baroness Knight of Collingtree then asked whether the government proposed to fund research into more effective flu vaccines, in the light of the recent report in medical journal the Lancet.
So far this year that figure is already on the rise as the flu virus has shown up in more than half of the country with 29 states reporting high or severe flu cases this winter.
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The new H7N9 strain of avian flu claimed two more deaths on Tuesday, increasing the death toll to seven, the World Health Organization said.
Speculation over Beijing's stance on North Korea, new bird flu cases, more discoveries of poisoned livestock and a dockers' strike are topping headlines in China's media today.
Walgreen and CVS took advantage of the crisis to convince a growing number of state regulators that pharmacists should be allowed to have the expanded role as a way to save lives and potentially money by getting more Americans flu shots from an army of pharmacists.
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Another strain of bird flu, H5N1, has led to more than 360 confirmed human deaths since 2003 and the deaths of tens of millions of birds.
More than 90 people have died of H5N1 bird flu since the disease's resurgence in December 2003 - most of them in South-East Asia.
China reported three more cases of human infection of the H7N9 bird flu virus on Sunday, raising the total number of cases to 21 all in the eastern part of the country.
Last year a new strain of H3N8 flu jumped from birds to mammals and was responsible for the death of more than 160 seals off the New England coast.
The Spanish flu of 1918 may have killed more people than the first world war.
He said the county, where the CDC had confirmed 10 cases of swine flu by Tuesday, sees more than 1, 000 flu-related deaths every year.
The type of flu that is going around is called H3N2, which is often linked to more serious disease compared to other flu varieties, Fauci said.
These kinds of hybrids are more likely to be milder because mammalian flu tends to make people less severely ill than bird flu.
Since January, more than 13, 000 people have died of complications from seasonal flu, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's weekly report on the causes of death in the nation.
It is important to mention that individuals that already have the flu who then become more ill during the duration of the illness, (difficulty breathing, or shortness of breath) need to seek medical attention immediately in an emergency department, as the risk of secondary pneumonia rises with an abrupt deterioration of your condition.
More than 4% of emergency department visits at Boston hospitals are from flu cases, up from 1% during non-flu season.
In Boston, a city hit hard by the flu, Massachusetts General Hospital has more than 175 cases of RSV on the record so far this season.
He cited matters related to regional financial security and public health security such as the avian flu and influenza pandemics as examples of areas where more dynamism was needed.
So some fear that the government knows more than it is letting on, particularly about the presence of avian flu in southern China, where health inspectors and the press both face constraints.
However, H1N1 turned out to be a very mild flu: many people experienced little more than a few days of sniffles, much like a common cold.
"However, those that did die are much younger than in seasonal flu so the years of life lost will be much more, " she told the BBC.
And the severity of the flu this year can be expected to prompt still more people to get vaccinated, including those who may not have done so in past flu seasons.
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Its technology fuses bacterial proteins with part of the flu virus so that the vaccine can be made much more cheaply.
So are we ready to battle a pandemic strain of bird flu if this new virus picks up the capacity to more efficiently spread from person to person?
Although, in most cases, it causes little more than severe flu-like symptoms, occasionally there can be complications including inflammation of the lining of the heart.
Economic issues are now as contagious as a flu pandemic, which is perhaps why the meltdown of 2008 seemed more severe and dangerous than its predecessors.
This caused flu to exit the cell too quickly and not have time to make more of itself.
But it reports the SFDA has announced that "more qualified enterprises which could produce swine flu vaccines" would be licensed by the end of September.
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