Monday, August 1, 2016

Increase in number of flu cases at polyclinics: MOH

Increase in number of flu cases at polyclinics: MOH
By Monica Kotwani  Posted 01 Aug 2016 16:56 Updated 01 Aug 2016 17:11

SINGAPORE: A recent spike in the number of flu cases is being caused by a strain that few in Singapore have immunity against.

Dr Leong Ho Nam, an infectious diseases expert at Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, said this in an interview with Channel NewsAsia following the release of latest figures by the Health Ministry showing an increase in the number of acute upper respiratory infections (ARI) seen by polyclinics in July, compared to June.

Dr Leong said Singapore's flu season parallels that of countries in the southern hemisphere, such as Australia. He said people may have picked up the virus while travelling in Australia during the school holidays in June.

"We have a new strain of influenza H3N2, and this has taken in not just Singapore but also the whole world. We see a lot of it between the different countries, spreading around as travellers move from one place to another. This is also a new strain. A lot of people are naive to it, in that we have not experienced this before."

In a statement to Channel NewsAsia, the Health Ministry confirmed there is "evidence of increased influenza activity in recent weeks from the rise in the proportion of cases where influenza viruses have been isolated". It said the rise is consistent with what is typically seen during the flu season, which lasts between November and February and May and August each year.

SIX-MONTH HIGH IN ACUTE UPPER RESPIRATORY CASES

According to the Ministry's weekly infectious diseases bulletin, the number of people visiting polyclinics for acute upper respiratory infections, characterised by symptoms such as a cold, cough and sore throat, hit a 6-month high of 3,427 cases for the week ending Jul 23.

In early June, weekly ARI numbers hovered at around 2,600 cases, before increasing to about 3,000 for the week ending June and early July. Since then, figures have hovered in the 2,900 range, before peaking in the third week of July.

In contrast, the number of patients visiting polyclinics with such symptoms stood at between 2,300 and 2,400 cases for each week in July last year.  More people also presented such symptoms last month compared to median July figures for the years 2011 to last year.

Despite the increase in flu activity, MOH said that influenza only accounts for less than 5 per cent of the total number of ARI cases. "Acute respiratory infections (ARI) are very common and are caused by a large number of different viruses, including influenza," the statement said.

Some general practitioners Channel NewsAsia spoke to confirmed they had seen an increase in the number of patients with such symptoms in the last two to three weeks. Dr Tan Tze Lee, a GP at the Edinburgh Clinic, said symptoms seem to be more "uncomfortable".

"We're seeing more cases of high fevers in patients - of 39 and 40 degrees Celsius. The typical runny nose, cough and sore throat are also more uncomfortable. And they're taking longer to clear," he said. Another GP Channel NewsAsia spoke with, who declined to be named, confirmed this trend at his clinic.

POOR 'HERD IMMUNITY' FOR H3N2

After a genetic mutation to the strain was discovered in 2014, H3N2 became the most prevalent strain for almost all of 2015 in Singapore. This year, H3N2 again emerged as the dominant strain among those who tested positive for the flu in June. MOH said that of specimens that tested positive for influenza that month, more than 80 per cent came back positive for the influenza A (H3N2) strain.

Dr Leong said despite the local population being exposed to the virus, it takes "a few years" for it to make its rounds, and for people to built up their herd immunity against it.

A vaccine for the strain has been available since October 2015, according to Dr Leong.

However, there has been a poor uptake, with less than five to 10 per cent of the population vaccinated. "For good protection, you need at the barest minimum 60 to 80 per cent of the population coverage and we are clearly not reaching that  So in terms of herd immunity protection, it is very poor. One can pick it up, and in turn, spread it to colleagues and the risk of transmission of the influenza virus is very fast and very easy," he said.

GET VACCINATED

Dr Leong said he expects the number of flu infections to remain high throughout the rest of the year, mainly because of a lack of immunity against the virus, a low vaccination rate and the start of the flu season in the northern hemisphere.

MOH said most people with the flu recover with rest and "symptomatic treatment", but urged young children, pregnant women, the elderly and those with chronic illnesses to get vaccinated.

- CNA/mo


- wong chee tat :)

Temperatures could hit 35°C in next fortnight: Met Service

Temperatures could hit 35°C in next fortnight: Met Service
Posted 01 Aug 2016 20:20 Updated 01 Aug 2016 20:30

SINGAPORE: The first fortnight of August will see less rain compared with weather conditions in the second half of July, the Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS) said on Monday (Aug 1).

In a media release, MSS said daily maximum temperatures are likely to range between 33°C and 34°C, and could reach around 35°C on a few days in the first two weeks of this month.

Singapore can also expect short showers in the late mornings and early afternoons on four to five days over the next fortnight. Showers with gusty winds are also likely to occur on one or two days in the pre-dawn hours and mornings, MSS said.

Rainfall for the first fortnight of August 2016 is expected to be "slightly below normal", MSS added, with low-level winds blowing mostly from the southeast or southwest.

JULY A "RELATIVELY WET" MONTH: MET SERVICE

Looking at last month's weather, MSS said southwest monsoon conditions prevailed over the region.

Singapore saw a few warm days in the first half of July, where daily maximum temperatures ranged between 30.2°C and 36°C, but the weather was wetter in the second half of the month, resulting in a "relatively cooler fortnight with daily maximum temperatures ranging between 28.8°C and 34.7°C", MSS said.

It added that July was a "relatively wet" month. The heaviest rain fell on Jul 21 and brought a daily rainfall of 96.8mm to the East Coast area. Almost all of Singapore received above normal rainfall in July as well.

"The highest rainfall of 426mm (120 per cent above average) was recorded over the western part of the island around Tengah. Rainfall was lowest around Buangkok where 146.6mm (16 per cent below average) was recorded," MSS said.

- CNA/dl


- wong chee tat :)

Changelog EFW Community 3.2.1

Changelog EFW Community 3.2.1
=============================

* COMMUNITY-163 Automatically add the rpm channel in efw-upgrade using the major version

* COMMUNITY-167 Icon is missing, applying configuration

* COMMUNITY-196 Save username on efw-upgrade call

* COMMUNITY-219 Create community-appliance package

* COMMUNITY-223 Event notifications edit not working on Community

* CORE-1367 Replace deprecated Perl calls

* CORE-1379 3.2 cannot be installed on vmware 5.5

* CORE-1382 Update translations

* CORE-1397 Evaluate OpenSSL CVE-2016-0800 and others

* CORE-1410 Raid failing event not detected

* CORE-1413 Rpm database rebuild procedure slow

* CORE-1422 connection.cgi use 100% of CPUs

* CORE-1427 endian.logger raises an exception mixing message parameters and exc_info

* CORE-1429 Add SSL/TLS and STARTTLS support to email notifications

* CORE-1438 Signature updates may leave files in inconsistent state

* CORE-1448 Add default pythonrc

* CORE-1454 Add methods for matching/deleting iptables connections and conntack

* CORE-1455 Add an to DomainNameRegex for validating non-FQDN

* CORE-1456 Allow wildcards hostname in Dnsmasq configuration

* CORE-1467 Fix sshd reload call

* CORE-1472 Fix ebtables path

* CORE-1483 Execute a trigger when a visit is deleted for inactivity

* CORE-1487 Ulogd does not start on netwizard

* CORE-1491 Factory default does not restore ethernet settings

* CORE-1498 Fix wrong imports in endian.restartscripts.getblackholedns

* CORE-1500 Restoring a 3.0 backup on 3.2 will leave files with wrong permissions

* CORE-1505 Support additional parameters in endian.authentication.auth_client.authenticate

* CORE-1508 Ability to set a custom Diffie-Hellman group for Apache

* CORE-1511 Ipsec logs not rotated due to missing folder in /var/log/archives

* CORE-1523 Improve ciphers used by Apache

* CORE-1525 Mountpoints are shown on "Hardware information" in dashboard page

* CORE-1532 Apache job fail to start due to missing certificate

* CORE-1535 Cannot create archive only backups

* CORE-1539 syslog-ng runs in multiple instances

* CORE-1560 Network hosts imported from 3.0 to 3.2 cause a traceback

* EOS-1005 Forced dependency to db-bin because on some products was missing in

* EOS-1020 Duplicate package after an update that restarts sshd

* EOS-1026 shadow: update to 4.2.1

* EOS-1067 Single user mode for password recovery is not working in yocto

* EOS-1084 usb_modeswitch segfault when pluggin 3G modem

* EOS-1098 vim: disable mouse default

* EOS-1105 Post installation trigger for cyrus-sasl-bin slows down or even block installation

* EOS-632 Implement multilib

* EOS-881 glibc - getaddrinfo stack-based buffer overflow CVE-2015-7547

* EOS-916 Update script used to create .pot files

* EOS-922 Introduce initrd in x86 kernels

* EOS-927 usb_modeswitch doesn't create ttyUSB if usb modem is plugged before boot start

* EOS-944 Grub: missing conffile in /etc/default/grub

* EOS-964 vim: remove backup file creation at all

* EOS-997 OpenSSL is unable to verify certificates issued by default root CA

* UTM-1389 DHCP failed to run

* UTM-1397 SSLv3 POODLE for SMTP Proxy

* UTM-1422 Squid going IPv6 on IPv6 sites resulting in (101) Network is unreachable

* UTM-1435 Disable ipv6 on postfix

* UTM-1440 Unable to disable Snort rules due to a TypeError

* UTM-1445 Snort rules based on "preprocessor ssl" prevent snort to start

* UTM-1451 Error joining Proxy not Active Directory

* UTM-1457 Show the total number of connections in "show openvpn"

* UTM-1460 Can't download content filter signatures on Alpha 3.2.0

* UTM-1463 proxy.pac improvements

* UTM-1483 Allow at (@) character in certificates common name

* UTM-1491 Allow wildcard certificates generation

* UTM-1492 Allow wildcards certificate pkcs12 upload

* UTM-1496 Certificated with a CA chains with more than one CA cannot be used in VPN server and VPN portal

* UTM-1515 Missing saslauthd on yocto

* UTM-1528 Proxy authentication is not working with AD

* UTM-1530 CA certificate symlink is not created

* UTM-1531 Postfix access control rewrite

* UTM-1536 Custom DHCP configuration not applied

* UTM-1549 Web filter profile containing space in the name are not applied to proxy ACL

* UTM-1555 Wrong DHCP lease expire time

* UTM-1559 Webfilter configurations are not removed and prevent c-icap to start
Source: README, updated 2016-07-26




- wong chee tat :)

Blog Updates:

Blog Updates:

Minor updates:

- Update labels on some old posts

Will continue to make minor improvements for this blog!

- wong chee tat :)

McAfee DAT version = 8243 (jul 31st 2016)

McAfee DAT version = 8243 (jul 31st 2016)

Link: here ( Select Yes. And it keeps getting updated daily. Region=US)




- wong chee tat :)

六字真言頌 怙主三寶

六字真言頌 怙主三寶

虔心皈依怙主三寶,真心憐憫慈母眾生,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……

佛為導師法為正道,僧為善侶同為救主,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
登山階梯過河船舟,驅愚慧燈險隘坦途,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
口誦真言心中祈禱,地獄烈火從此熄滅,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
唱頌六字胸中發願,冷獄冰雪消融變暖,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
誦持六字威力無比,十八地獄變成樂土,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
世間無實因緣難料,生死輪回行善為要,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
萬物無常善惡交替,向善精進矢志不渝,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
暇滿人身難得至寶,虛度此生實為可惜,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
貪心無盡欲望皆空,惡趣業因棄之從善,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
萬惡煩惱罪孽根源,時刻提防凡夫癡念,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
強壯身軀入土荒野,驅走死神上師引路,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
瑪尼頌詞怙主三寶,諾言活佛順口編唱,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
虔誠頂禮觀音菩薩,消除罪孽速證佛果,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
如來佛子慈悲引路,眾生往生極樂佛土,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……


六字斷除六道苦難頌


嗡字放光照耀天界,死苦難忍觀音救度,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
瑪字光照阿修羅界,爭斗死傷觀音救度,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
尼字放光照亮人間,生老病死觀音救度,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
巴字放光照亮畜生,蠢啞痛苦觀音救度,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
美字放光照亮惡鬼,饑餓難熬觀音救度,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
吽字放光照亮地獄,冷熱煎熬觀音救度,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……


- wong chee tat :)

六字真言頌 怙主三寶

六字真言頌 怙主三寶

虔心皈依怙主三寶,真心憐憫慈母眾生,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……

佛為導師法為正道,僧為善侶同為救主,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
登山階梯過河船舟,驅愚慧燈險隘坦途,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
口誦真言心中祈禱,地獄烈火從此熄滅,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
唱頌六字胸中發願,冷獄冰雪消融變暖,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
誦持六字威力無比,十八地獄變成樂土,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
世間無實因緣難料,生死輪回行善為要,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
萬物無常善惡交替,向善精進矢志不渝,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
暇滿人身難得至寶,虛度此生實為可惜,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
貪心無盡欲望皆空,惡趣業因棄之從善,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
萬惡煩惱罪孽根源,時刻提防凡夫癡念,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
強壯身軀入土荒野,驅走死神上師引路,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
瑪尼頌詞怙主三寶,諾言活佛順口編唱,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
虔誠頂禮觀音菩薩,消除罪孽速證佛果,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
如來佛子慈悲引路,眾生往生極樂佛土,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……


六字斷除六道苦難頌


嗡字放光照耀天界,死苦難忍觀音救度,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
瑪字光照阿修羅界,爭斗死傷觀音救度,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
尼字放光照亮人間,生老病死觀音救度,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
巴字放光照亮畜生,蠢啞痛苦觀音救度,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
美字放光照亮惡鬼,饑餓難熬觀音救度,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
吽字放光照亮地獄,冷熱煎熬觀音救度,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……


- wong chee tat :)

六字真言頌 怙主三寶

六字真言頌 怙主三寶

虔心皈依怙主三寶,真心憐憫慈母眾生,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……

佛為導師法為正道,僧為善侶同為救主,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
登山階梯過河船舟,驅愚慧燈險隘坦途,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
口誦真言心中祈禱,地獄烈火從此熄滅,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
唱頌六字胸中發願,冷獄冰雪消融變暖,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
誦持六字威力無比,十八地獄變成樂土,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
世間無實因緣難料,生死輪回行善為要,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
萬物無常善惡交替,向善精進矢志不渝,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
暇滿人身難得至寶,虛度此生實為可惜,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
貪心無盡欲望皆空,惡趣業因棄之從善,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
萬惡煩惱罪孽根源,時刻提防凡夫癡念,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
強壯身軀入土荒野,驅走死神上師引路,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
瑪尼頌詞怙主三寶,諾言活佛順口編唱,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
虔誠頂禮觀音菩薩,消除罪孽速證佛果,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
如來佛子慈悲引路,眾生往生極樂佛土,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……


六字斷除六道苦難頌


嗡字放光照耀天界,死苦難忍觀音救度,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
瑪字光照阿修羅界,爭斗死傷觀音救度,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
尼字放光照亮人間,生老病死觀音救度,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
巴字放光照亮畜生,蠢啞痛苦觀音救度,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
美字放光照亮惡鬼,饑餓難熬觀音救度,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……
吽字放光照亮地獄,冷熱煎熬觀音救度,嗡瑪尼巴美吽……


- wong chee tat :)