Federal health officials released figures last Friday showing influenza-like illnesses are now higher throughout the country than levels generally seen at the peak of the seasonal flu season. But they discharged media reports from a day earlier that one in five children had contracted swine influenza in the first weeks of October. There were eleven new pediatric deaths in the week ending October 17, increasing the total since April to 102. In a normal influenza season, there are forty to fifty deaths among children.
Dr Thomas R Frieden, the CDC director, declared that media reports on Thursday that one-fifth of the nation's children had contracted swine influenza early in the month were a misinterpretation of the information and the numbers were positively significantly lower. That information was from a CDC-conducted phone survey of fourteen thousand at random selected homes.
Residents were asked whether or not they had influenza-like symptoms from the 1st of October to the 11th.
Frieden announced that though infection rates of one in 5 children have been noted in some communities in the peak of the infection, it's likely the majority of children in the survey simply suffered from colds and sniffles. "The date simply shows that kids get plenty of infections," he revealed.
As for the swine influenza vaccine, that has been slower arriving than Federal authorities had anticipated, Frieden explained that 16.1 million doses are currently available and that at least 11.3 million of them had been shipped as of Wednesday, an increase of 5.4 million doses from the prior week. He claimed more doses would be available shortly, but he declined to forecast how many and when. "Vaccine production is a lot less predicted than we could wish," he said.
Frieden said the seriousness of the swine flu virus was about the same as it was in the spring, and that it is in general similar to that of the seasonal influenza. But the ethnic composition of victims is changing, Lyn Finelli, head of the flu surveillance at the CDC, said at a meeting Thursday.
During the spring season, there were a disproportionately high number of Latinos who had it. This fall, the proportion of affected Latinos has declined, and the African Americans seem to be getting more of it. As far as the Native Americans are concerned, only 2 deaths have thus far been reported to the CDC.
The World Health Organization also reported on Friday that there were 4,999 swine influenza deaths through October 18, up 264 from the week before.