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Use Social Media to Monitor Swine Flu

News organizations are reporting the declaration of national public health emergency as case of the Swine Influenza A(H1N1) continue to be reported in the United States. Recent cases identified in Kansas, New York, and Ohio. For the latest information on the Swine Influenza visit http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/

Use these additional social media and web techniques to follow the news developments, public health announcements, and spread of swine flu cases in your city, region, state, or country.

1) set-up a Google alert for key words. For the most specific infomation add your state or city into the alert search criteria

2) follow the tweets about Swine Influenza using the hash tag, #swineflu. The RSS for this search is http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23swineflu

3) View locations of suspected and known

View H1N1 Swine Flu in a larger map



4) This is a useful blog post from an emergency manager about his recent efforts to monitor emergencies using social media. No doubt the practice will serve him well now.

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By Greg Friese

Greg Friese, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, is an author, educator, paramedic, and marathon runner.

Greg was the co-host of the award winning EMSEduCast podcast, the only podcast by and for EMS educators. Greg has written for EMS1.com, JEMS.com, Wilderness Medical Associates, JEMS Magazine, EMSWorld.com and EMS World Magazine, and the NAEMSE Educator Newsletter.