OT: Vaccine groups?

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From article: never heard of these groups ...

National Vaccine Surveillance Network, which tracks the virus in

three typical counties, and the National Respiratory and Enteric

Virus Surveillance System, a volunteer network of U.S. laboratories

that test for the virus in samples provided by physicians.

Vaccine found to ease effects of rotavirus

It delays the season and reduces the severity of the top cause of

infant diarrhea, a report said.

By H. Maugh II

Los Angeles Times

Two years after its approval against rotavirus, the leading cause of

severe diarrhea in children, a vaccine made by Merck appears to have

dramatically decreased the impact of the disease in the United

States, public health officials reported yesterday.

RotaTeq is delaying the onset of the rotavirus season by three

months and reducing its severity by about half. The incidence of

rotavirus activity during the first months of 2008 was the lowest it

has been since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began

monitoring the disease 15 years ago, researchers wrote in the

agency's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The highly contagious rotavirus is the biggest cause of severe

vomiting and diarrhea in infants and young children. In this

country, it causes more than 400,000 physician office visits a year,

as many as 272,000 emergency room visits, up to 70,000

hospitalizations, and 20 to 60 deaths.

An estimated 500,000 children die from the infection each year

around the world.

The RotaTeq vaccine, manufactured by New Jersey-based Merck & Co.'s

plant in West Point, Montgomery County, has been shown to prevent 74

percent of all rotavirus infections, 98 percent of severe infections

and about 96 percent of hospitalizations. The CDC recommends that

all infants receive their first dose of the vaccine by 12 weeks and

all three required doses by 32 weeks.

In a separate action yesterday, the U.S. Advisory Committee on

Immunization Practices voted to add another vaccine - made by

GlaxoKline, which has a U.S. headquarters in Philadelphia - to

a list of routine childhood immunizations. The committee expressed

no preference between Glaxo's two-dose Rotarix, which was formally

approved in April, and Merck's three-dose RotaTeq.

No good data exist about the number of children who have been

vaccinated, but studies at selected sites suggest that about 50

percent of 12-week-olds have received one shot and that about one-

third of 13-month-olds have received all three doses.

The decline in new cases appears " greater than expected based on the

protective effects of the vaccine alone, " Anne Schuchat, director of

CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases,

said in a statement. She speculated that vaccination was helping

reduce the spread of the virus to unvaccinated people.

No agency tracks all cases of rotavirus in the United States. The

new data come from the National Vaccine Surveillance Network, which

tracks the virus in three typical counties, and the National

Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System, a volunteer

network of U.S. laboratories that test for the virus in samples

provided by physicians.

In the last 15 years, the rotavirus season typically began in mid-

November. Last winter, according to the report, it began in late

February. The number of tests performed for rotavirus during the

season was, on average, 37 percent lower than the number in previous

years and the number of positive tests was 78.5 percent lower.

In the three sentinel counties, the proportion of stool samples

testing positive for rotavirus in children inder 3 was 51 percent in

2006, 54 percent in 2007 and 6 percent in 2008.