H1N1: Swine Flu Deaths in Turkey now 241

H1N1 Swine flu claimed another 46 lives in Turkey this week, bringing the national death toll to 241, the health ministry said Thursday, amid resistance to the nation's vaccination plans.

Some 230 people infected with A(H1N1) virus remain hospitalised, among them 86 in intensive care, the ministry said on its web site.

Turkey's vaccination campaign, launched on November 2, has been hit by controversy, notably after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused to have an injection and publicly chided the health minister over his insistent appeals on citizens to get vaccinated.

Turkey has planned to vaccinate 28 million of its 71-million population, but officials say the number of people who have so far volunteered for an injection is far below the expectations. Critics of the vaccine say its safety, efficiency and possible side effects have not been sufficiently tested.

Beware H1N1: The Computer Phishing email

Beware the H1N1 phishing e-mail, designed to convince you to put your personal information on a Web page created by a crook so they can steal from you.

Your first clue here may be the address the e-mail purports to be from, cdcmails.gov. According to the domain gurus Whois, this is not a registered domain.

What frightens folks most is its claims that the topic is a real program, and forms part of the official vaccination programs for H1N1. The problem here is that you have to register for the fake H1N1 malware but you don’t have to register for the official program.

Malware and phishing victims are directed to a “personal profile” capture page, run by the scammers.

The US CDC has put out an alert in response to the hoax. They have a special feature on their continuing blog site, called hoaxes_rumors.

It might be interesting if the researchers and analysts compared the spread of this virus with the spread of the real H1N1 strain. I suspect that this one will be more infectious but with a shorter duration.