By Karlie Pouliot A stark reminder about how deadly the new H1N1 virus can be. During a news briefing Thursday, U.S. health officials said the virus has hit pregnant women especially hard. “The CDC is aware of about 700 cases of 2009 H1N1 in pregnant women since late April or early May,” Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention told FOXNews.com. “There have been about 100 pregnant women admitted to intensive care units and there have been 28 pregnant women who have died from 2009 H1N1.” Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the National Center for Immunization...

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The very first doses of swine flu vaccine will start arriving in states and cities that ordered it on Tuesday, and might be sprayed up the first patients’ noses by the end of the week, U.S. health officials said on Thursday. Dr. Anne Schuchat of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the first U.S. H1N1 vaccine to be delivered will be 600,000 doses of a nasal spray made by MedImmune, a division of AstraZeneca. “This is a bit earlier than we were planning to get started,” Schuchat said in a...

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Many people who have died of H1N1 swine flu in the United States have also had bacterial infections, health officials reported on Wednesday. A study of 77 patients who died of the new pandemic H1N1 virus showed 29 percent of them had so called bacterial co-infections, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. About half of these had Streptococcus pneumoniae, which can be prevented with a vaccine, the CDC said. It said doctors may be missing these infections in people severely ill with flu. Read More…

By Julie Steenhuysen, Reuters CHICAGO – Roche Holding AG said on Friday there have been just 23 reported cases in which H1N1 swine flu has resisted the effects of antiviral drug Tamiflu. Tamiflu, made by Roche and Gilead Sciences Inc, is one of two drugs shown to work well against H1N1 swine flu. Dr. David Reddy, who leads Roche’s pandemic task force, told reporters the number was in line with what the company had observed in its own clinical trials. “As we see more of the drug used, we will see more of these isolated cases over time,” Reddy said in a conference call. Read...

By Sheilah Downey Conflicting directions that accompany prescriptions to Tamiflu could lead to “serious potential for dosing errors,” and prompted a public safety alert from the Food and Drug Administration. When their daughter was diagnosed with the H1N1 virus, a doctor and his wife, also a medical professional, had to determine the correct dosage of Tamiflu by using this equation: 5ml (volume of teaspoon) x 0.75 x 12mg/mill = 45mg on the syringe. The problem, says doctors, is the Tamiflu comes with syringe markings in milligrams while the prescription specifies the dose in teaspoons....

Swine flu is spreading in Scotland at the rate of 1,000 new cases a week – up by 7,034 in the past week compared with 6,180 for the previous seven days, according to latest official estimates. Government surveillance figures also show the rate of GP consultations for flu-like illnesses, including swine flu, across Scotland rose to 62.1 per 100,000 this week. This is an increase from last week’s figure of 53.3. One critically-ill patient has been sent to England for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), in which blood is circulated outside the body and oxygen added artificially. Read...

European Commission expected to rubber-stamp regulator’s recommendations within days Sarah Boseley, health editor Mass vaccination against swine flu could begin within weeks, following the approval of two vaccines by the European regulator today. One of the two recommended for a licence by the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) is Pandemrix, the vaccine made by British company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) which is under contract to supply the UK. The other is Focetria, made by the Swiss company Novartis. The UK has also signed a contract with Baxter, but the EMEA said yesterday that it needed some...

By Phil Serafino Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) — Manufacturers can produce about 3 billion doses of swine flu vaccine annually, less than the 5 billion initially estimated, the World Health Organization said. There won’t be enough shots to protect all 6.8 billion people around the globe, the Geneva-based United Nations agency said in an e-mailed statement today. The WHO said last week that production would miss its May forecast because of difficulties growing the virus known as H1N1. “Global manufacturing capacity for influenza vaccines is limited, inadequate and not readily augmented,” according...

By Daniel Martin Doctors across the country believe patients are dying because of blunders by staff at swine flu call centres. Serious illnesses such as meningitis, tonsillitis and pneumonia had been missed by the untrained staff, they said. Thirty-seven per cent of GPs told researchers they have had to pick up the pieces of treating those wrongly told by operators they had swine flu. And three doctors said their patients had died as a result of the errors, amid fears that many more cases have gone unreported. The research by Pulse magazine revealed that 91 per cent of GPs believe Tamiflu should...

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. More than three million doses of swine flu vaccine will be available by the first week of October, a little earlier than had been anticipated, federal health officials announced Friday. But nearly all those 3.4 million doses will be of the FluMist nasal spray type, which is not recommended for pregnant women, people over 50 or those with asthma, heart disease or several other problems, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned. Nonetheless, it will still be possible to vaccinate people in other high-risk groups: health care workers, people caring...