Tag Archives: Pandemic

Swine Flu Makes Dramatic Return

The H1N1 virus, which killed over 14,000 people in a 2009 global pandemic, has returned with a vengeance in the 2013-14 flu season.

The Centers for Disease Control says that for the first time since that 2009 outbreak, H1N1 has been killing victims at an epidemic level.

The CDC says that the death toll is only a fraction of the 2009 outbreak but that levels are significantly higher than previous years.  With six weeks to go in the flu season, some states have seen more than a nine-fold increase in deaths.   California has 243 deaths this year compared to 26 at this time last year.

Some California hospitals have been so overrun with flu patients that they have set up triage units in their parking lots to keep infected patients away from potentially immunosuppressed patients in the main hospital building.

Many Californians rushed to get flu shots after a woman who worked for Sacramento’s ABC TV affiliate died from H1N1 within four days of feeling ill.

The CDC also says that surveillance reports in Virginia and Maryland show a wide outbreak of H1N1 but they along with the District of Columbia do not record deaths from the flu.

Duke University Medical Center reported a disturbing trend in that most hospitalized flu patients were younger, an average age of 28.5, and had more significant complications than in previous H1N1 outbreaks.

Experts Say H1N1 Pandemic Death Toll Actually Ten Times Higher

A new report on deaths linked to the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic shows the total number of deaths to be more than ten times higher than reported by the World Health Organization.

The study also discovered that respiratory deaths in the Americas can be 20 times higher than the death rates in Europe.

Examining only deaths from pneumonia that could have been connected to the flu, the study showed Mexico, Argentina and Brazil had the highest death rates from the pandemic. The toll was significantly lower in New Zealand, Australia and in most of Europe.

“[The report] confirms that the H1N1 virus killed many more people globally than originally believed,” study author Lone Simonsen of George Washington University said. “We also found that the mortality burden of this pandemic fell most heavily on younger people and those living in certain parts of the Americas.”

The World Health Organization said in 2010 the death toll from H1N1 was around 18,500 but noted their total was limited to laboratory confirmed testing.