These were the headline news from May 2009 about influenza whether Bird Flu (H5N1) or Swine Flu (H1N1).

31 May » Vietnam has first case of H1N1 flu: doctor
Reuters – USA
Vietnam — which has grappled with the more deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in recent years — requires any suspected H1N1 cases to be isolated for seven days. …

30 May » Gov’t spends more to prevent A/H1N1 flu
SGGP – Ho Chi Minh City,Vietnam
In related news, when asked about the purchase of 32 specialized trucks that would be used to spray chemicals to prevent the H5N1 bird flu, …

29 May » Scientists develop new basis for H5N1 vaccine: WHO
Reuters – USA
Pharmaceutical companies including Novartis are already working on vaccines against H5N1 bird flu, which has killed or forced the culling of more than 300 …

28 May » Swine flu: genetics of the novel virus
Agoravox – Paris,France
… to be of importance for pathogenicity, virulence and transmissibility in humans on the basis of the reconstructed 1918 virus or H5N1 (“bird flu“). …

27 May » Egypt announces 27th bird flu fatality
The Associated Press
… succumbed to the H5N1 virus in Egypt are women and children, tasked with caring for domestic poultry. Egypt is the country worst hit by bird flu outside …

26 May » Health care workers being trained to detect, manage pandemic flu
Stabroek News – Georgetown,Guyana
He said since the emergence of the H5N1 bird flu in 2003, Guyana established a national committee to follow up on outbreaks of the virus. …

25 May » WHO to Rewrite Its Pandemic Rules
New York Times – United States
The six-point system was created in 2005 when the threat was H5N1 avian flu, which has a fatality rate of about 60 percent. But the system does not take …

24 May » Anti-bird, swine flu measures affecting livelihoods in Egypt
Middle East Online – London,UK
CAIRO – The death of a four-year-old girl on 18 May after she contracted the H5N1 avian flu virus brings the total number of bird flu deaths in Egypt to 27 …

23 May » Team hopes to start testing H1N1 vaccine within weeks
The Exponent – West Lafayette,IN,USA
“We are trying to use a similar approach as we did with the H5N1 bird flu virus,” Mittal said. “The technology we are using is the same as the bird flu; …

22 May » The history of the synthetic H1N1 flu virus and a not-so-rosy future
Online Journal – Silver Springs,FL,USA
NPR and Alaska Public Radio was reporting what was extracted from the 1918 flu victim’s corpse was the H5N1 avian flu virus, but that was erroneous. …

21 May » Two Egyptian boys contract bird flu – agency
Reuters – USA
CAIRO, May 20 (Reuters) – Two Egyptian boys have contracted the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus, bringing the total number of cases in the most …

20 May » Value of vaccination
Malaysia Star – Malaysia
In recent years, the world faced new threats in the forms of the 1997 H5N1 bird flu and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and now, the influenza A …

19 May » H1N1 Flu Now Seen In 39 Countries – Danger Level Decreasing
NewsBlaze – Folsom,CA,USA
This actually is the situation with the H5N1 “bird flu” which still shows up occasionally and which has an extremely high mortality rate among normally …

18 May » A Lethal Mixture: Swine and Bird Flu. Can We Trust Baxter, GSK and …
Age of Autism – Trumbull,USA
“The biggest worry would be if a person or a pig became infected with both swine flu and H5N1 avian flu at the same time. …

17 May » The Human Nose As Noose For Bird Flu
The Statesman – Kolkata,India
PTI LONDON, May 15: The human nose is too cold for Bird Flu, says a new study. An international team, led by Imperial College London, has found that avian …

16 May » WHO: Countries must share swine flu virus samples
PR-Inside.com (Pressemitteilung) – Wien,Austria
Chan said no one knows what change might occur in the H5N1 bird flu virus should the swine flu outbreak develop into a pandemic. Chan says swine flu, …

15 May » Egyptian boy, 4, contracts bird flu virus
Reuters – USA
CAIRO, May 14 (Reuters) – A four-year-old Egyptian boy has contracted the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus, bringing to 70 the number of human avian …

14 May » Is Tamiflu ‘better’ than Relenza?
ZDNet Asia – Singapore
Sales of antiviral drugs got a shot in the arm, if you will, in 2006, when the avian influenza–”bird flu“–epidemic broke out in Asia. …

13 May » New virus “very unstable”, more changes seen-expert
Reuters – USA
“Both H1N1 and H5N1 are unstable so the chances of them exchanging genetic material are higher, whereas a stable (seasonal flu) virus is less likely to take …

12 May » Swine Flu Outbreak From Mexico to New Zealand: Timeline
Bloomberg – USA
American scientists said the pathogen lacks the lethal genetic traits of the virus responsible for the 1918 pandemic or the H5N1 bird flu virus that’s …

11 May » Egyptian girl contracts bird flu, 69th case
Reuters – USA
The case brings to 69 the number of people confirmed to have contracted the H5N1 avian influenza virus in Egypt, which has been hit harder than any another …

10 May » Pandemic’s impact on trade gauged
Washington Times – Washington,DC,USA
… Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the threat of an Avian (H5N1) human bird flu pandemic of 2005-07 as benchmarks to estimate scenarios of the possible impact …

09 May » Top flu expert warns of a swine flu-bird flu mix
The Associated Press
While people can catch bird flu from birds, the bird flu virus — H5N1 — does not easily jump from person to person. It has killed at least 258 people …

08 May » Keeping swine and bird flus apart top priority
AsiaOne – Singapore
PARIS, May 7, 2009 (AFP) – Preventing the swine flu that is spreading across the globe from infecting patients sick with the deadly H5N1 avian flu should be …

07 May » Is H5N1 the One?
American Enterprise Institute – Washington,DC,USA
Other strains of avian influenza that have caused disease in humans include H7N7 (which caused communicable human illness in the Netherlands and one death …

06. May  » Egypt pig farmers clash with police over cull
AFP
Egypt has been battling an outbreak of bird flu for three years. Twenty-six people have died in Egypt from the H5N1 strain of bird flu since it was first …

05. May  » Swine Flu Source Traced to Birds and People; Don’t Blame Pigs
Bloomberg – USA
While the H5N1 bird flu that spread across Asia the past six years, killing millions of fowl and several hundred people, never gained genes to spread easily …

Quick news available on Twitter