Swine flu situation at end of July
The Minister for Health and Ageing, Nicola Roxon, has given an update of the H1N1 pandemic as at the end of July. She reported that there were then 409 people in hospital across the country with H1N1 pandemic flu, with 121 of them in intensive care.
This is putting significant pressure on many hospitals, particularly in the states that are now peaking. The pressure is easing slightly in Victoria, the first state to have a mass outbreak of H1N1.
There have now been 74 deaths of people who have tested positive to the H1N1 flu strain.
The Minister commented that “To-date we do feel confident that our mitigation efforts are having some impact, but we know that we have a number of weeks still to go where this is likely to put pressure on many hospitals and still continue at a peak for some time”.
“About 80% of those presenting with flu like symptoms are testing positive for pandemic flu.This is an increase from previous weeks when the figures have been 70 and 76%, with variation amongst the states”.
“It’s clear to us, of course, that this flu is the dominant flu this season in Australia and, in fact, replacing some of the seasonal flu numbers.
The median age of those who have died and tested positive to swine flu is 51 years old, which compares to 83 for regular seasonal influenza.
Regarding hospitalization with H1N1 in comparison to normal influenza patterns, the Minister said, “It’s probably a little bit early to tell. At this point in the flu season, my advice is that the numbers of people hospitalised are not greatly in advance of those that you would see through the normal seasonal flu and I think that’s the replacement factor that we’re seeing”.
“Anecdotally we certainly are hearing that there is more pressure on our intensive care units, so it may be that those that are being hospitalised, at least a portion of them are being more severely impacted than we’ve seen before,” she said.
“But the trends, in different states, certainly show that it’s likely to ease in a number of weeks, particularly in New South Wales and Queensland, where the onset was several weeks behind that in Victoria”.
