background: primary health care workers (phcw) are the front-liners in any infectious disease outbreaks. the recent outbreak of h1n1 influenza demonstrated that uptake of h1n1 vaccination remained low amongst pchw despite its proven effectiveness. this trend is worrying as phcw are the first point of contact in any emerging outbreak of future influenza epidemic. purpose: to investigate factors ...

A remarkable feature of the 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza virus is its efficient transmissibility in humans compared to that of precursor strains from the triple-reassortant swine influenza virus lineage, which cause only sporadic infections in humans. The viral components essential for this phenotype have not been fully elucidated. In this study, we aimed to determine the viral factors critical...

Here we present a review of the literature of influenza modeling studies, and discuss how these models can provide insights into the future of the currently circulating novel strain of influenza A (H1N1), formerly known as swine flu. We discuss how the feasibility of controlling an epidemic critically depends on the value of the Basic Reproduction Number (R0). The R0 for novel influenza A (H1N1...

The emergence of a swine influenza virus (H1N1) pandemic strain earlier this year prompted a huge worldwide effort to produce swine flu vaccines in time for the winter flu season. Justine Davies reports.

This thesis reports on the use of Twitter during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic to explore its use as an “infoveillance” approach complementary to traditional surveys and content analysis. This study aimed to: 1) report on the use of “H1N1” versus “swine flu”, 2) conduct a qualitative analysis of tweet content, and 3) assess the feasibility of Twitter as a real-time content, sentiment, and public atten...

A swine influenza outbreak occurred on a commercial pig farm in Thailand. Outbreak investigation indicated that pigs were co-infected with pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus and seasonal influenza (H1N1) viruses. No evidence of gene reassortment or pig-to-human transmission of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus was found during the outbreak.

This Perspective discusses the following study published in PLoS Medicine: Skowronski DM, De Serres G, Crocroft N, Janjua NZ, Boulianne N, et al. (2010) Association between the 2008-09 Seasonal Influenza Vaccine and Pandemic H1N1 Illness during Spring-Summer 2009 : Four Observational Studies from Canada. PLoS Med 7(4): e1000258. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000258. In three case-control studies an...

OBJECTIVES The pandemic of novel influenza A (H1N1) virus has required decision-makers to act in the face of the substantial uncertainties. In this study, we evaluated the potential impact of the pandemic response strategies in the Republic of Korea using a mathematical model. METHODS We developed a deterministic model of a pandemic (H1N1) 2009 in a structured population using the demographic...