By Michael Laris An overflow crowd converged on a Montgomery County H1N1 flu clinic in Silver Spring on Wednesday morning as hundreds of residents sought an early opportunity to get vaccinated. “We’re busy, more busy than we thought,” said site commander Cindy Edwards of Montgomery’s Department of Health and Human Services. “We haven’t had a chance to breathe.” The line snaking around the Dennis Avenue Health Center in Silver Spring was taking residents more than an hour, though it was moving smoothly. Parking filled up early and more cars packed on a...

By CLAUDIA COFFEY/myfoxdc WASHINGTON, D.C. – An Ashburn, Virginia woman is in the fight of her life after suffering a very rare side effect to the seasonal flu shot. The vast majority of doctors say flu shots are safe. In this case, the FDA says they found nothing wrong with this particular batch, but sometimes there are complications. That’s apparently what happened to Desiree Jennings, and now her life will never be the same. At 26 years old, Desiree Jennings was the picture of health. She’s a Washington Redskins cheerleader and an avid runner. Her life changed forever on August...

By Robert Preidt, HealthDay There could be a shortage of hospital beds in 15 states if 35% of Americans get sick from the H1N1 (swine) flu virus, and 12 other states could reach or exceed 75% of their hospital bed capacity, a study released Thursday shows. The number of people who could get sick with H1N1 flu in the United States ranges from a high of 12.9 million in California and a low of 186,434 in Wyoming, and the number of people who are hospitalized could range from a high of 168,025 in California to a low of 2,485 in Wyoming, according to the report from the non-profit group Trust for America’s...

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...