A Combined Vaccine For Seasonal Influenza And H1N1 Virus Developed Soon.

A new vaccine that will protect the community against both the epidemic H1N1 flu virus and seasonal influenza could be available by the middle of next year. This spells good news as people will be in a position to immunize themselves against the various influenza strains at one go, as against the separate vaccines offered now.

Talking to the media on Friday, the medical director of the Communicable Disease Centre in Singapore, Leo Yee Sin, declared global experts are working on the new drug that may help to take on the problem of possible H1N1 mutations in the future.

“We understand that the virus mutates and it’s mutating all of the time. The main thing is to watch the genetic change of the virus,” she revealed. “In other words, we are steadily developing a vaccine to catch up with the mutations and changes.”

Professor Leo added the epidemic H1N1 virus has, in most parts of the world, replaced the various seasonal influenza strains as the most dominant.

As the H1N1 spreads easily, the virus is probably going to stay. The key now is to observe how this will affect seasonal influenza strains. “We thought that the disease burden in tropical countries is low, in terms of influenza burden. That is not the case. When we start analyzing our own local data, we realize that our data, in terms of morbidity and mortality, is in fact very comparable to the temperate countries for seasonal influenza as well as for pandemic influenza,” she said.

HR practitioners at the symposium also debated best practices to handle influenza pandemic in firms. Ho Geok Choo, Chairman of Human Capital Singapore, declared : “Very frequently, when an emergency hits, you cannot expect the full force to be in place and that being true, there would be interruption to the business.

There might be lapses in terms of the way work is carried out and there might even be openings, so all of these can lead to productivity issues.

Braniff Watson writesmany publications on the topic of theswine flu virus . To obtain more knowledge on theswine flu virus , visit the H1N1 website .