Command & Control, Policy & Planning

Swine flu has ‘pandemic potential’

By Jianggan Li | 12 May 2009

A new analysis concludes that the current swine flu epidemic does have the potential to become a major pandemic, which is likely to be comparable to flu pandemics in the 20th century.

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The study, published in Science magazine, suggests that the current H1N1 flu outbreak is likely to be less severe than the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed tens of millions of people worldwide.

Instead, the authors of the study believe it will be similar to the 1957 pandemic of Asian flu, which left between one to five million people dead globally.

The report also suspects that the real number of swine flu cases in Mexico, where the epidemic broke out, might be as high as 32,000, most of which went unreported.

There are currently 1626 confirmed case of H1N1 flu in the country.

Dr Anne Schuchat, interim Deputy Director for Science and Public Health Programmes at the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said the situation could be similar in the US, where 2618 cases have been confirmed so far.

The calculations are based mainly on infection rates, but not on severity of the disease or number of deaths. So far, the swine flu does not seem to have the level of sustained human-to-human transmission of a “true” pandemic, according the experts.

The World Health Organization recently raised its global pandemic alert to phase 5 — just shy of the highest level possible, which is phase 6, signifying a global pandemic.

According to the WHO Rapid Pandemic Assessment Collaboration, which produced the new Science paper, the new analysis supports WHO’s decision to maintain the pandemic alert at phase 5, and indicates a certain level of person-to-person spread.

The highest alert level possible is phase 6,signifying a global pandemic.