Looking Back and Moving Forward: The Four Year Anniversary of the Swine Flu Pandemic

Homeland Security Digital Library Blog 2013-04-22

Summary:

Flu Caduceus

April 2013 marks the four year anniversary of the H1N1 "Swine" flu outbreak in the United States. Referred to as "pandemic H1N1/09" by the World Health Organization (WHO) and as "novel influenza A (H1N1) by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the pandemic was first detected in the U.S. in California, where it had migrated through person-to-person contact from Veracruz, Mexico.

The pandemic originated from a reassortment of North American swine-lineage H1N1 and a Eurasian lineage swine-origin H1N1, leading to the term "swine flu" even though the strain was found to have circulated exclusively amongst humans and not pigs. Because this new strain had never before been detected in humans or animals, the flu vaccines produced for the 2009 season were ineffective at protecting the population from contracting the virus.

The virus made its way across the country over the course of four months, and in mid-June it was reported that all 50 states, along with Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, had been affected by the illness. The WHO declared a pandemic in June 2009 when a total of 74 countries and territories had reported infections. The outbreak finally began to taper off by the end of July 2009 and was considered contained by the end of September of the same year. By this time the FDA had approved four H1N1 vaccines for public dispersal and the first doses were administered on October 5, 2009.

For the seven month period from April 2009-November 2009, the CDC estimated that there were about 47 million cases of the H1N1 virus in the United States and an estimated 9,820 H1N1-related deaths. These estimates were updated in April 2010 to include 61 million domestic cases and 12,470 deaths for the calendar year. It was also reported that the virus took the heaviest toll on young adults, pregnant women, and people with medical problems, including obesity and neuromuscular disorders.

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Link:

http://www.hsdl.org/hslog/?q=node/9770

From feeds:

Berkeley Law Library -- Reference & Research Services ยป Homeland Security Digital Library Blog

Tags:

public health public health policy health & medical services

Authors:

lledger

Date tagged:

04/22/2013, 11:12

Date published:

04/17/2013, 13:48