Does H1N1 Pandemic counts as world moving?

11 June 2009:

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently announced that H1N1 (formerly called Swine influenza) is now a pandemic (11th June 2009). Swine Influenza virus strains fall under the subtypes of the influenza A virus known as H1N1, H1N2, H3N1, H3N2, and H2N3 as well as the Influenza C virus.

The current outbreak of the so called “swine flu” has been found to be caused by a new strain of Influenza A virus subtype H1N1. Now correctly classified under H1N1, this virus was first detected in humans in Mexico during March/ April of 2009, although H1N1 transmission between pigs has been diagnosed as early as 1930. Since its first detection, now almost 30,000 confirmed cases have been reported in 74 countries (June 11 data, WHO).

The US, Mexico, Australia and Canada are the most affected countries and amazingly except for Australia, those are North American countries. The US alone has more than 13,000 infected populations while Australia harbours almost 1,400 infections. These figures clearly show that in less than 3 months, this infection has spread rapidly from southern -Northern Hemisphere to southern- Southern hemisphere.

12 June 2009:

Novartis AG has produced a first batch of a vaccine to fight the H1N1 flu outbreak, will start clinical trials in July and expects to be able to ramp up manufacture rapidly.

The first results achieved with H1N1 wild type strain showed that it was quicker to make the vaccine through cell-based production compared to egg-based manufacturing, the Swiss drugmaker said in a statement on Friday.

"Cell-based manufacturing technology allows vaccine production to be initiated once a pandemic virus strain is identified without the need to adapt the virus strain to grow in eggs, as with traditional vaccine technologies," the group said.

The World Health Organisation declared an influenza pandemic on Thursday and called on governments to prepare for a long-term battle against an unstoppable flu virus.

29 June 2009:

Radiant Research, Inc. announced that it is actively recruiting subjects and establishing operational plans for upcoming H1N1 vaccine trials. The World Health Organization declared the H1N1 influenza outbreak a pandemic, and the CDC has shipped virus samples to several manufacturers with the hope of having vaccine available to the general public by the fall. Manufacturers will need to complete clinical trials prior to release of vaccine to the public.

"We have over a million subjects in our database and they are both familiar with the research process and very interested in this type of trial," said Michael Kritschgau, Vice President of Radiant Recruitment. "We are currently making contact with these potential subjects so we can be ready to enroll once the manufacturers are ready to move to the clinical trials stage. We anticipate that companies producing the vaccine will soon be reaching out to various research.