Word: viruses
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...antivirals work? If administered soon after symptoms appear, antivirals Oseltamivir and Zanamivir (brand names Tamiflu and Relenza) are believed to reduce the severity and shorten the duration of the disease by current strain of swine flu. The drugs work by inhibiting an enyzme chemical helper that the flu virus uses to spread from infected human cells to healthy ones. So while not killing the virus, it helps the body fight off the disease by slowing its spread. This, in turn, may help prevent "acute respiratory distress syndrome" - the sudden worsening of flu that, along with secondary lung infections...
Much of the evaluation of the city's shutdown has been overshadowed by mounting criticism on the federal government for letting the virus get out of control in the first place. After alleging the first fatality from swine flu was a 39-year-old woman from the poor southern Mexican state of Oaxaca who died on April 13, Health Secretary Jose Córdova conceded that Edgar Hernandez, a four-year-old boy, who survived a bout of flu in February and March, had actually had the virus, as tests have now shown. Local authorities had raised alarm bells about...
Peppered with questions about the issue in a tense press conference, Córdova responded that there had been mixed signals from the flu epidemic in La Gloria and most who had taken ill had suffered from a familiar form of the influenza virus. He also said the government had no model of the H1N1 virus - which has features of avian, pig and human viruses - to base their studies on. "We never had this kind of epidemic in the world," he said on Monday. "This is the first time we have this kind of virus." As if to underline the point...
...Gloria outbreak may also give clues about the origins of the virus. The community is a few miles from an industrial pig farm Granjas Carroll de Mexico, which is 50% owned by Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, Inc. Residents have complained for several years about effluent - composed of animal waste and porcine feces - dumped by the farm and accuse it of making them fall sick. However, government agricultural experts joined the company in saying they have found no traces of swine flu in its hundreds of workers or thousands of hogs and piglets...
Whatever the origins, the virus is putting increasing pressure on the capital city. After his Tuesday announcements about restaurants, Ebrard said that if the number of sick rises drastically, he will consider still harder methods such as shutting down the subway system - a move that would really send shockwaves through the economic backbone of the capital. "We need to work together and be responsible," the mayor said. "We are going to defeat this challenge as we have done with all the other difficulties that our city has faced...