Time to get ready for another flu season.
This year’s flu season is shaping up to be unusually long and unpredictable, with current outbreaks of swine flu in schools potentially followed months from now by waves of seasonal flu among the elderly, according to health officials. Along with the new H1N1 swine-flu virus, officials are keeping a close eye on some nasty seasonal strains. One is widely resistant to oseltamivir, the popular antiviral drug marketed as tamiflu. And an emerging variant of another virus known for hitting the elderly hard isn’t fully covered by this year’s seasonal flu vaccine. “This season is going to be crazier than ever,” said William Schaffner, an infectious-disease expert at Vanderbilt University. – From WSJ