A US resident has died in Texas from Swine flu. She died earlier in the week but, presumably, the virology results only came in this morning. It is not known yet whether this woman had actually visited Mexico, or whether this is the first death from human to human spread outside of Mexico. She was [...]

In general, I have had only one problem with the way that the various disease control agencies have reacted to the Swine Flu outbreak. It was all a bit too slow. The WHO, CDC and New Zealand’s Department of Public Health have all reacted appropriately and smoothly but several days and perhaps as much as a [...]

The picture from Mexico now seems substantially less alarming. Far fewer people seemed to have died from the Swine Flu than previously thought and deaths are not escalating even though numbers are increasing daily. There were no deaths from Swine Flu in Mexico yesterday. If the World Health Organisation learn anything from this, it is [...]

There is a lot of silliness going on about Swine Flu in the media and in the world in general. Here are five of the more prevalent myths: 1. You can get Swine Flu from eating pork/ham/bacon FALSE. Even if you ate raw pig flesh from an infected pig (Eww), you would be highly unlikely [...]

The first person to die in the US was a 23 month old Mexican child, visiting from Mexico who became ill while in the US. Although this is a tragedy, it does not change the picture significantly as the transmission of this occurred in Mexico (i.e. it is still part of the Mexico epidemic, albeit spread to [...]

It seems that the 3 students from Northcote college who were on flight NZ5 have just caught colds and don’t have Swine flu. This is great, but it does illustrate one of the major difficulties New Zealand’s health services will face if this disease turns pandemic. We are about to go into our busiest time [...]

The Centre for Disease Control in the US have declared a public health emergency over the swine flu potential epidemic/pandemic. They have confirmed eight cases in New York City, seven in California, two in Texas, two in Kansas, and one in Ohio, meaning this is substantially more widespread than originally thought. These are all properly confirmed [...]

The sudden outbreak of the human mutation of swine flu in Mexico is actually a cause for concern. Particularly as it may already be in New Zealand. Interestingly, given the absurd hysteria that accompanied the far less risky bird ‘flu “pandemic that wasn’t”, the authorities seem considerably more blasé about it. The Minister of Health [...]