"swine flu" news

Health officials say four people in North Carolina have tested positive for a type of swine flu that's resistant to the drug Tamiflu. It's the first cluster of that many cases seen in the U.S.

One week, Rhonda Rebmann's niece had the flu.  The next, her 10-year-old tabby cat started showing respiratory symptoms.  Buddy Lou died four days after she brought the cat to the family's veterinarian, the first feline H1N1 death in the United States.

Health experts say extraordinary measures against swine flu - most notably quarantines imposed by China, where entire planeloads of passengers were isolated if one traveler had symptoms - have failed to contain the disease.

Two people in China who received swine flu vaccinations died in the past week but at least one death appears unrelated to the vaccine and the other was being investigated.

Swine flu has sickened about 22 million Americans since April and killed nearly 4,000, including 540 children, say startling federal estimates released Thursday.

Federal health officials now say that 4,000 or more Americans likely have died from swine flu - about four times the estimate they've been using.

Countries can chose from stronger measures like school closures that may slow the spread of swine flu in the beginning, but the disease will continue to spread anyway, a World Health Organization spokesman said Wednesday.

Some of New York's biggest companies, including Wall Street giants Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, received doses of swine flu vaccine for at-risk employees, drawing criticism that the hard-to-find vaccine is going first to the privileged.

In some countries, swine flu accounts for up to 70 percent of the flu viruses being sampled, said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, WHO's top flu official.

KVAL News asked the Lane County Health Department if large clinics with long lines are the best way to vaccinate people after the Cottage Grove city manager wrote a letter critical of making people wait outside in the cold and crowd together inside.

Over 100 children have died in the U.S., and otherwise healthy adults have died from complications. Is it time to panic about the swine flu? No. KVAL News got some advice from a doctor and found plenty of fiction clouding the facts regarding the flu.

Medical Alert: H1N1 & Seasonal Flu Season       The latest from: WHO | U.S. Gov't | CDC | Oregon DHS | Lane Co.        Other information: Fact or Fiction | Flu news | Flu Vaccines & You

The swine flu virus has been confirmed in a cat treated at the Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine. Officials said Wednesday it's the first known case of the virus to be diagnosed in a cat.

Robert Gibbs on Tuesday said concern that terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base in Cuba were receiving vaccines was misplaced. Gibbs says no vaccines are at the naval base and none are on the way.