What can we expect from H1N1 this fall? Mayo Clinic expert looks south for answers.
Renee Tessman
http://www.kare11.com/life/community/health/healthfair_article.aspx?storyid=820237
Brace yourself. We could be in for a particularly nasty flu season this fall and winter.
We’re not talking about seasonal flu. This is the H1N1 variety.
From his office at the Mayo Clinic in southern Minnesota, flu pandemic expert, Dr. Greg Poland is keeping a close eye on the southern hemisphere and how H1N1 virus is spreading. Because while we’re in the midst of a sunny summer, it’s winter flu season there. Poland says, “We’re talking tens of thousands of cases and close to 1,000 deaths by now.”
He continues, saying, “One thing of concern early on in Argentina in part is they were seeing case fatality rates that were somewhere in the 2 to 2 1/2% range. Now in the U.S. our case fatality rate has been under, well under, 1%. About .4 to .5%. But 2 to 3% is the same case fatality rate that historians think happened in 1918.
The 1918 flu pandemic killed more than 600,000 in the U.S. So the question is, could H1N1 become as deadly?
Poland, who is a liaison on the Advisory Committee on Vaccination Practices and who is chair of the Pandemic Preparedness Panel for the Secretary of Defense, says there are concerns.
One is that in the southern hemisphere, H1N1 has completely replaced seasonal flu.
Poland says, “What’s happening down there is mimicking what was seen in 1918 and again in 1968. This pandemic virus is fitter and is outpacing, outcompeting, replacing all the seasonal virus.”
Plus there are a few H1N1 cases that have been resistant to the anti-viral drug Tamiflu.
Of course vaccine is being made for H1N1 but manufacturers say they may only get 30% to half the doses they originally hoped putting even more pressure on a tiered rationing system that would give health care workers and children the vaccine first.
Poland says many kids may get the vaccine in mass vaccination clinics at schools. He says, “Because it’s such an efficient way to immunize large numbers of kids that, after all, are the primary vectors for this virus.”
Because H1N1 is still considered milder here in the U.S. some have talked about getting exposed, a sort of H1N1 party, before the virus possibly gets worse in the fall. But Poland says that is a big no no because some healthy children have died from H1N1 in the U.S.
Plus, he says, transmitting the virus through more and more people is not a good idea because that’s how it mutates and changes. That could make it tougher to fight.
Some good news is a study recently showed as many as forty percent of people over age 50 and 60 may have some level of immunity to H1N1. That may be why we’re not seeing higher numbers of illness in older people.