Two Egyptian children have H5N1 bird flu – agency (AlertNet) Source: Reuters CAIRO, May 26 (Reuters) - Two four-year-old Egyptian children have contracted the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus, raising to 76 the number of cases reported in Egypt, the state news agency MENA ... [News Source]

Alert, not yet alarmed. The number of confirmed cases is growing daily yet the so-called swine flu's relative lack of clout has surprised experts. The WHO has already changed its criteria for defining a pandemic, putting less emphasis on the simple geographical spread of the disease. [News Source]

Flu study leads to $50K award (The Cincinnati Enquirer) What began as academic curiosity for a 17-year-old junior at Mason High School has since turned into a nationally acclaimed science project on the global spread of the 2006 avian flu. [News Source]

The Challenges Of Avian Influenza Virus: Mechanism, Epidemiology And Control (Medical News Today) The latest special issue of Science in China Series C: Life Sciences focuses on the recent progress in the H5N1-related research field. Early 2009, eight human infection cases of H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) virus, with 5 death cases, were reported in China. This again made the world alert on a possible pandemic worldwide, probably caused by avian-origin influenza virus. [News Source]

Swine flu genes circulated undetected for years. Genes included in the new swine flu may have been circulating undetected in pigs for at least a decade, according to researchers who have sequenced the genomes of more than 50 samples of the virus. [News Source]

Sorting panic from pandemic. Some health experts say that, although the latest developments are cause for concern, the extent of the threat has arguably been exaggerated—even by other experts and some organisations. [News Source]

Water recalled as E coli found in Ireland. Large containers of bottled water are being recalled after low levels of E coli bacteria were detected in some of them. [News Source]

Pandemics: good hygiene is not enough. The US CDC is doing a superb job of explaining the current swine flu situation and how uncertain it is. The CDC's biggest failure is in not doing enough to help people visualize what a bad pandemic might be like so they can understand and start preparing for the worst. [News Source]

When is a flu pandemic not a flu pandemic? There has been a phenomenal mismatch between quite sensible rules about how to declare a flu pandemic, and equally sensible rules about how to respond. The mismatch was wholly predictable, yet somehow no one saw this coming. [News Source]

Pandemics: avoiding the mistakes of 1918. In the next influenza pandemic, be it now or in the future, be the virus mild or virulent, the single most important weapon against the disease will be a vaccine. The second most important will be communication. [News Source]

WHO to rewrite rules for declaring a pandemic. Bowing to pressure, the World Health Organization announced Friday that it would rewrite its rules for alerting the world to new diseases--meaning the swine flu circling the globe will probably never be declared a full-fledged pandemic... [News Source]

Feds to set aside $1B for swine flu vaccine. Federal health officials said Friday that they will set aside $1 billion to jump-start commercial development of a vaccine against the new H1N1 flu virus now spreading worldwide. The funding will be used to produce bulk supplies of two key components of a vaccine and to test them in humans. [News Source]