Sunday, July 5, 2009

Japan: Journal was told of flu mutation first

Monday, July 6, 2009

OSAKA (Kyodo) The Osaka Prefectural Government sent a research paper to a U.S. medical journal on the first case in Japan of a genetic mutation of swine flu resistant to Tamiflu about a week before making the finding public, officials said Sunday.

"It's not that we intentionally placed priority on the manuscript and delayed the announcement," said Tatsuya Oshita, an official in the prefectural government's health and medical care department. "As it turned out, we dealt with the matter in a way that could be criticized and we are sorry."

The H1N1 virus resistant to Tamiflu was found in a woman in her 40s in Osaka Prefecture on June 18 — two weeks before the announcement — through virus sample analysis at the Osaka Prefectural Institute of Public Health, the officials said.

A staff member of the institute submitted a manuscript on the analysis result to the U.S. journal June 24, but it had not been run in the magazine as of Sunday, the officials said.

The prefectural government reported the case to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry last Wednesday, a week after it sent the manuscript to the U.S journal, and held a news conference the next day to make it public based on advice from the ministry, the officials said.

The prefectural government had said its report to the ministry was delayed because it took some time to study the methods for examining abnormalities in viruses.

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