All Nature’s swine flu coverage is collected on our news special page. These regular updates on The Great Beyond round up the latest from other news sources around the globe.
A million dollar contract for flu vaccines in the US has been awarded to a company facing demands from its creditors that it be declared bankrupt. Meanwhile, reports of H1N1 spread continue.
America’s Department for Health and Human Services announced on Tuesday that a $35 million contract for influenza vaccine had been awarded to Protein Sciences Corporation, of Meriden, Connecticut.
However, creditors of the company have filed an involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition against it, alleging they are owed $11.7 million (Bloomberg). Robin Robinson, a director at Health and Human Services, says the US government has done “two very thorough financial audits” of Protein Sciences (NY Times).
The DHHS says:
With this new technology, known as recombinant influenza vaccine, a gene would be extracted from a flu virus and placed into an insect virus called baculovirus, which does not affect people and can multiply quickly to high levels in insect cells. The cells are purified to become a basic part of a human vaccine.
This vaccine could be a backup to H1N1 vaccines, says Robinson (NY Times). “We turned out our first batch of doses – about 100,000 – against (A)H1N1 flu last week and we’re continuing to manufacture it,” Dan Adams, chief executive officer of Protein Sciences told AFP.
Argentina says seven more people have died in that country. This pushes the total death toll to 17, says the BBC.
Australia is reporting its third swine flu death, and is rushing medical supplies to Aboriginal communities (AFP, Perth Now). These communities often have poor health and healthcare, and it is feared they could be exceptionally vulnerable to swine flu (AP).
The first Australian death from swine flu, last Friday, was an Aboriginal man.
Reuters is reporting that Iraq has its first cases too, with seven members of the women’s national basketball being treated in hospital after returning from Chicago this month. “Today, six cases of this epidemic flu, H1N1, have been diagnosed in our ministry’s central lab,” it quotes health minister Saleh Al-Hasnawi as saying.
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