By Lucette Lagnado, Wall Street Journal
Researchers spooked by the recent brutal flu season and fearful of a pandemic are looking for something more effective than a seasonal shot to prevent the virus. Ideas include germ-killing lamps and a turbo-charged “universal vaccine”that would be effective for years and would fight all strains of flu, not just a few.
NYC Health + Hospitals, the nation’s largest public health system, recently convened experts to brainstorm how to handle a flu pandemic, in which millions would be stricken.
“It is not a matter of if it will happen, it is a matter of when it will happen,” Syra Madad, senior director of the system’s Special Pathogens Program, told the gathering of more than 100 hospital and government officials and researchers. “We have all the ingredients for a pandemic,” she said, recalling the 1918 flu that killed 50 million people across the world.
