Re: Russia - H1N1 - more schools closed
Re: Russia - H1N1 - more schools closed
Source:
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=14380314&PageNum=0
Two classes of Moscow school under A/H1N1 flu quarantine
29.09.2009, 17.20
MOSCOW, September 29 (Itar-Tass) -- Two classes of Moscow secondary school No 1994 are under A/H1N1 flu quarantine, a source at the city education department told Itar-Tass.
?Two seventh grade classes of that school are staying at home. They receive home tasks by phone and do not visit the school building. Restrictions have been applied to other classes, as well. Children stay inside their classrooms for studies and lunch in order to avoid the spread of the infection,? he said.
The quarantine was announced after a school student had spent summer vacation in Bulgaria and obtained a medical certificate confirming her good health from a private polyclinic. The certificate was necessary for admission to classes. Two days after school had begun, the girl fell ill and was diagnosed with A/H1N1. The school was disinfected.
?All the children who contacted the sick girl and those who were ill at home in the same period were examined by doctors. The quarantine will last until October 4,? the source said.
There have been A/H1N1 flu cases in other Russian schools, as well.
Irina Gashkova, the principal of the first Murmashi village school closed over the A/H1N1 flu outbreak, may be fined, a source at the Russian Prosecutor General?s Office told Itar-Tass on September 22.
In all, 20 school students contracted the virus from a boy, who had spent summer vacation in a country with a high flu rate.
?According to the preliminary information, the flu outbreak resulted from the access of a third-form student to classes prior to the end of the ten-day flu quarantine,? the source said.
Thus, administrative charges were brought against the school administration, including the principal, he said.
Besides, prosecutors demanded that Kola central district hospital chief Alexander Antishin must provide administrative punishment of the hospital employee that failed to ensure the schoolboy?s quarantine. The school was closed for disinfection until September 29.
Meanwhile, a total of 130 volunteers are taking part in clinical tests of the Russian A/H1N1 flu vaccine in St. Petersburg, head of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences? Flu Institute laboratory testing new viral infection treatments Marianna Yerofeyeva told Itar-Tass.
The last 40 volunteers were inoculated with the inactivated vaccine Pandeflu last Friday, she said.
The volunteers went home to individually monitor their condition, Yerofeyeva said.
In her words, all the volunteers inoculated with the live vaccine Influir and the inactivated vaccine Pandeflu are all right. Results of the clinical tests will be available in the middle of October.
?More clinical tests started in Moscow. Thirty-four out of 70 volunteers were injected with the inactivated vaccine at the Mechnikov Vaccine and Serum Institute. Another 60 volunteers were inoculated at the Defense Ministry?s Epidemiological Center in Sergiyev Posad,? Yerofeyeva said.
The inoculation will start in November-December, and 40 million doses of the domestic flu vaccine will be ready by January.
The second phase of clinical tests of the Russian A/H1N1 flu vaccine started in St. Petersburg on September 18.
Thirty volunteers, including Flu Institute Director, Academician Oleg Kiselyov, institute staff members and healthy residents of St. Petersburg, were inoculated with the inactivated vaccine on that day.
?This is not a PR campaign, but a sincere wish to prove the security of the new antidote and the necessity of inoculations amid the global spread of the new virus,? Kiselyov told Itar-Tass.
Clinical tests started with a live vaccine inoculation on September 10. The results of the first test will be available by October 10, and the second test will last for 56 days.
?Clinical tests of live and inactivated vaccines are necessary to affirm the efficiency, security and acceptability of the new vaccine,? he said.
Once the tests are over, industrial production will be approved and inoculation of average people will begin, Kiselyov said.
Russia?s first A/H1N1 flu vaccine was been produced at the Immunopreparat pharmaceutical plant in Ufa, Bashkortostan, plant press secretary Guzel Yusupova told Itar-Tass earlier. She said the vaccine was called Pandeflu.
?Experimental series of Pandeflu had been tested at the plant?s quality control department for sterility, toxicity, pyrogenicity, safety and antigen stress. The vaccine was sent to the Moscow Tarasevich Medicine and Biological Control and Standardization Institute for clinical tests on volunteers,? she said.
?The vaccine produced by Immunopreparat will comply with GMP international standards. It was based on the strain received from the National Center for Preparedness, Detection, and Control of Infectious Diseases in Atlanta, USA. Standards of the British National Institute for Biological Standards and Control (NIBSC) were applied in the project,? Yusupova said.
?The commercial production and delivery of the vaccine to health institutions of Russia will start in November-December 2009,? she said.
The Federal Consumer Rights and Human Well Being Service has officially permitted the Flu Research Institute to use in the innovative Russian flu preparations, Ingaron and Alfaron, in the treatment of flu, including ?bird? influenza (H5N1) and A/H1N1, Kiselyov said.
?The preparations are particularly efficient in the therapy of various clinical forms of flu, and in case of preventive treatment in the period of the seasonal increase of the cold and flu rate,? he said.
?The Russian designers of the A/H1N1 flu vaccine, Ingaron and Alfaron, will present their products at the WHO forum in Geneva in November 2009. The Flu Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences based in St. Petersburg owns the technology, and the Farmalon pharmaceutical plant based in the Moscow region is the producer,? Kiselyov said.
Russian Chief Public Health Official Gennady Onishchenko, who visited the Flu Research Institute last week, said that the A/H1N1 flu season ended in the southern hemisphere without mutations. ?The virus did not change, so the majority of virologists believed it was not highly pathogenic. Let us be patient and see how the virus behaves in the northern hemisphere, including Russia some of whose regions have reported a seasonal increase of the cold and flu rate,? Onishchenko said.
