Google.org has an interesting site devoted to following flu trends. You can chart by “National” or by “Province.
Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate current flu activity around the world in near real-time.
Check out the site below:
Learn more about the research behind Google Flu Trends:
Read the article published by Nature, Detecting influenza epidemics using search engine query data.
Pregnant women are four times more likely to be admitted to hospital if they contract swine flu than the general population, American scientists have found. An article published online in The Lancet written by the scientists at the respected Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has quantified the extra risk swine flu poses during pregnancy for the first time since the outbreak began.
The analysis included 45 deaths in America, 13 per cent of which were in pregnant women and all were relatively healthy before they contracted flu.
Fifty-two new cases of the H1N1 swine flu virus have been recorded in B.C. since July 14, according to the health ministry.
To date, 434 individuals in British Columbia have tested positive for the virus that has caused illness in the U.S., Mexico and dozens of other countries.
Thirty-two of B.C.’s new cases are in the Fraser Health Authority region.
British Columbia’s confirmed cases include:
- 223 in Fraser Health.
- 18 in Interior Health.
- 33 in Northern Health.
- 104 in Vancouver Coastal Health.
- 56 on Vancouver Island.
(VancouverSun)
Five kids at an elementary school in Burnaby are paying the price for a decision by the Fraser Health Authority not to close Marlborough Elementary school near Metrotown and have become infected with Swine Flu.
The Fraser Health Authority, led by CEO Dr. Nigel Murray, had told the school there was no reason to think additional kids would be infected after one case was diagnosed last week.
Research Scientists Discover How Flu Damages Lung Tissue: “A protein in influenza virus that helps it multiply also damages lung epithelial cells, causing fluid buildup in the lungs, according to new research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and Southern Research Institute . Publishing online this week in the journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, the researchers say the findings give new insight into how flu attacks the lungs and provides targets for new treatments.”
