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Flu Pandemic Intensifies in Both Hemispheres

July 10, 2009 (LPAC)—Besides spreading intensely in the Southern Hemisphere Winter "flu season," A/H1N1 is spreading significantly in the non-flu season in Canada, the United States, Britain, and elsewhere in the North. The U.S. has well over 1 million cases, as stated this morning by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius, who otherwise proposed tiddly-winks contingency plans at today's H1N1 Influenza Preparedness Summit at the National Institutes of Health. In Britain, an estimated 8,000 people contracted the flu in just this past week; in London, the number of people reporting flu-like symptoms to a physician, is running at the rate of about 180 per 100,000, which is nearing the defined level for an "epidemic" of 200 per 100,000.

The World Health Organization this week indicated that it will shortly cease providing lists of lab-confirmed flu cases nation-by-nation, because of the international prevalence of A/H1N1. WHO will focus attention instead on "hot spots" and indications of shifts and mutations.

At an all-day meeting in Toronto today, the Canadian Pandemic Preparedness Meeting of medical experts discussed logistics for a "worst-case" scenario of a renewed flu surge in the Fall, as already the health-care system is barely coping with the case load. For example, Dr. Donald Low, microbiologist-in- chief at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, said of the potential for stress on the system this Winter, "What I mean by that is, people who are going to have to go into the intensive care unit, are going to have to go on ventilators, are going to have to be supported for anywhere from a week to two weeks." He pointed out how there must be the capacity "to manage those patients, considering the experience in Winnipeg, where they [were] just about at the brink, where they weren't going to be able to handle any more cases if they came in the front door."

A rush-consignment of ventilators was recently sent to Winnepeg by Federal authorities. Now, the Canadian government has moved to set up a stockpile of 500 ventilators, by placing a volume order for 370 new units, to add to its existing stock.

As of today, 878 hospitalizations have occurred in the new flu outbreak across Canada, with 9,429 laboratory-confirmed cases, and thousands more beyond that. "The whole system is at a crisis point, and we have very little reserve to deal with the extra demands of the system," said Alberta David Swann, a Liberal leader in Alberta, and former medical officer there, where 30 cases are hospitalized.

In Britain, waves of new cases are reported, and the central authorities are issuing guidelines on how to deploy scarce ventilators.


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