U.S. health experts meeting in San Francisco, California expressed confidence that a new swine-flu outbreak can be contained, as the Northern Hemisphere prepares for its winter influenza season. Researchers, pleased by new studies showing that a single dose of swine-flu vaccine is sufficient to ensure adult immunity, said over the weekend that they were confident that the spread of the H1N1 virus could be contained. “This is really good news that one dose works. We can expect to have twice as many doses, and we will have vaccines for more people than we thought earlier,” said U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) flu expert Nancy Cox. In addition to the unexpected news about single-dose vaccine effectiveness, scientists believe the H1N1 virus does not contain a protein which is believed to cause more serious infections. The protein “generates a lot of inflammation that you see during influenza virus infections,” said Jonathan McCullers of Saint Jude Children's Research Hospital. The lack of the protein, which “increases the virulence of the virus itself and also helps secondary bacterial pathogens,” could point to lower fatality rates, he said.
