Ontario’s Deadly Swine Flu Surge, 24 dead in 72 hours
In a shocking surge, 24 Ontario residents have died in less than 72 hours from Swine Flu, the Public Health Agency of Canada reported on its website.
Ontario’s startling fatalities reported between November 10 and 11 a.m. EST on November 12 catapults the death toll from 37 reported on Nov. 10 to a total of 61. That is twice the figure of dead in Quebec and the highest of any province in Canada.
See also: B.C. Hospitals working over capacity.
Hospitals from coast to coast are swamped with admissions and visits to emergency departments in the past week with other provinces reporting record admissions from Swine Flu since its outbreak was noticed in April.
Nova Scotia and Manitoba reported one death each between Nov. 10 and Nov. 12 to take Canada’s national fatality toll to 161 with much of the spike happening since the second wave of Swine Flu began in October.
On November 10 at 11 a.m. EST, Ontario’s death toll stood at 37 and the Canadian national total was at 135.
46 Canadians have died between November 5 and November 12 with heavy rates of hospitalizations across the country.
Ontario government officials could not be reached last night to comment about the 24 deaths.
The latest federal figures show B.C. has 23 deaths with eight occurring in just one week, Alberta has 20, Saskatchewan 5, Manitoba 8, Ontario 61, Quebec 35, Nova Scotia 2, Newfoundland and Labrador 5 and one each in Yukon and Nunavut.
Million Hit By Illness Worse Than Swine Flu In Ukraine
A deadly plague could sweep across Europe, doctors fear, after an outbreak of a virus in Ukraine plunged the country and its neighbors into a state of panic.
A cocktail of three flu viruses are reported to have mutated into a single pneumonic plague, which it is believed may be far more dangerous than swine flu. The death toll has reached 189 and more than 1 million people have been infected, most of them in the nine regions of Western Ukraine.
President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko has called in the World Health Organisation and a team of nine specialists are carrying out tests in Kiev and Lviv to identify the virus. Samples have been sent to London for analysis.
President Yushchenko said: “People are dying. The epidemic is killing doctors. This is absolutely inconceivable in the 21st Century.”
In a TV interview, the President added: “Unlike similar epidemics in other countries, three causes of serious viral infections came together simultaneously in Ukraine – two seasonal flus and the Californian flu
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Swine Flu Could Kill Millions Worldwide Lacking Vaccines
The swine flu pandemic could kill millions and cause anarchy in the world’s poorest nations unless £900m can be raised from rich countries to pay for vaccines and antiviral medicines, says a UN report leaked to the Observer.
The disclosure will provoke concerns that health officials will not be able to stem the growth of the worldwide H1N1 pandemic in developing countries. If the virus takes hold in the poorest nations, millions could die and the economies of fragile countries could be destroyed.
Health ministers around the globe were sent the warning on Thursday in a report on the costs of averting a humanitarian disaster in the next few months. It comes as officials inside the World Health Organisation, the UN’s public health body, said they feared they would not be able to raise half that amount because of the global downturn.
Gregory Hartl of WHO said the report required an urgent response from rich nations. “There needs to be recognition that the whole world is affected by this pandemic and the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. We have seen how H1N1 has taken hold in richer nations and in the southern hemisphere. We have been given fair warning and must act soon,” he said.
The report was drawn up by UN officials over the last two months. It was commissioned in July after Ban ki-moon, the UN’s secretary general, expressed concern that the H1NI virus could have a severe impact on the world’s poorest countries.
It paints a disastrous picture for the world’s most vulnerable people unless there is immediate action. “There is a window in which it will be possible to help poor countries get as ready as they can for H1N1 and that window is closing rapidly,” it says.
WHO Warns Of Severe Form Of Swine Flu
Doctors are reporting a severe form of swine flu that goes straight to the lungs, causing severe illness in otherwise healthy young people and requiring expensive hospital treatment, the World Health Organization said on Friday.
Some countries are reporting that as many as 15 percent of patients infected with the new H1N1 pandemic virus need hospital care, further straining already overburdened healthcare systems, WHO said in an update on the pandemic.
“During the winter season in the southern hemisphere, several countries have viewed the need for intensive care as the greatest burden on health services,” it said.
“Preparedness measures need to anticipate this increased demand on intensive care units, which could be overwhelmed by a sudden surge in the number of severe cases.”
Earlier, WHO reported that H1N1 had reached epidemic levels in Japan, signaling an early start to what may be a long influenza season this year, and that it was also worsening in tropical regions.
“Perhaps most significantly, clinicians from around the world are reporting a very severe form of disease, also in young and otherwise healthy people, which is rarely seen during seasonal influenza infections,” WHO said.
“In these patients, the virus directly infects the lung, causing severe respiratory failure. Saving these lives depends on highly specialized and demanding care in intensive care units, usually with long and costly stays.”
Something Different Happening With New Flu
The new strain of H1N1 flu is causing “something different” to happen in the United States this year — perhaps an extended year-round flu season that disproportionately hits young people, health officials said on Thursday.
An unusually cool late spring may be helping keep the infection going in the U.S. Northeast, especially densely populated areas in New York and Massachusetts, the officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
And infections among healthcare workers suggest that people are showing up at work sick — meaning that workplace policies may be contributing to its spread, the CDC officials said.
The new strain of swine flu is officially a pandemic now, according to the World Health Organization.
So far the virus is causing mild to moderate disease, but it has killed at least 167 people and been confirmed in nearly 40,000 globally.
The United States has been hardest hit, with upward of 100,000 likely cases and probably far more, with 44 deaths and 1,600 hospitalized.
“The fact that we are seeing ongoing transmission now indicates that we are seeing something different,” the CDC’s Dr. Daniel Jernigan told a news briefing.
“And we believe that that may have to do with the complete lack of immunity to this particular virus among those that are most likely affected. And those are children,” Jernigan added.
U.S. Health Officials Troubled By New Flu Pattern
The new influenza strain circulating around most of the United States is putting a worrying number of young adults and children into the hospital and hitting more schools than usual, U.S. health officials said on Monday.
The H1N1 swine flu virus killed a vice principal at a New York City school over the weekend and has spread to 48 states. While it appears to be mild, it is affecting a disproportionate number of children, teenagers and young adults.
This includes people needing hospitalization — now up to 200, said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“That’s very unusual, to have so many people under 20 to require hospitalization, and some of them in (intensive care units),” Schuchat told reporters in a telephone briefing.
“We are now experiencing levels of influenza-like illness that are higher than usual for this time of year,” Schuchat added. “We are also seeing outbreaks in schools, which is extremely unusual for this time of year.”
New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Frieden agreed with Schuchat.
“We’re seeing increasing numbers of people going to emergency departments saying they have fever and flu, particularly young people in the 5 to 17 age group, ” Frieden, who has been named by U.S. President Barack Obama as the new CDC director, told a news conference.
About half of all cases of influenza are being diagnosed as the new H1N1 strain, while the rest are influenza B, or the seasonal H1N1 and H3N2 strains. Flu season in the United States is usually almost over by May.
WHO Says H1N1 Could Infect Two Billion Worldwide
The World Health Organization says as many as two billion people could be infected by the new H1N1 virus, if the current outbreak continues to spread.
WHO flu chief Keiji Fukuda made the comment Thursday at the daily WHO news conference in Geneva, not as a prediction, but as an observation about flu pandemics.
In previous pandemics, Fukuda said, one-third of the world’s population gets infected. So with a world population of six billion people, it’s “reasonable” to expect two billion infections, he said.
That doesn’t mean any pandemic that might be declared of this virus would be severe and cause as many deaths as the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, which killed about 70 million people.
It may be more like the the last flu pandemic, the Hong Kong Flu in 1968, which was considered mild by pandemic terms. Only about one million people globally died of that flu, caused by a new strain of H3N2. That compares to the estimated 500,000 people who die around the world every year from seasonal flu.
Fukuda said it is impossible at this point to say whether a H1N1 pandemic would be mild or severe.
Last week, the WHO raised its flu pandemic alert to Phase 5, one step short of a pandemic. On Thursday, Fukuda said the H1N1 virus is not yet spreading in a sustained way outside North America, so the pandemic level will remain at 5.
“We remain at Phase 5. That is not changed,” Fukuda told reporters.
