A Background In Root Criteria In Flu Pandemic

When a new kind of flu virus appears for which there is no immunity and no existing vaccine, it can spread rapidly from country to country. Once the pandemic reaches the UK it will take a few weeks to take hold, but it will then cause widespread illness across the country over a period of 2-3 months. There may be a second wave of illness a few weeks or months later. Previous experience suggests around a quarter of the population will develop flu during this time.

A pandemic is the rapid spread of a new human influenza around the world. Influenza pandemics happen when a new strain of a flu virus appears which can infect humans, to which most people have no immunity and which can transmit efficiently from human to human. Pandemic influenza is therefore much more severe, in terms of the number of people who become ill and the number who die, than the outbreaks of ordinary flu which happen each winter in Europe. During a pandemic many millions of Europeans become infected and ill and a proportion of these will become very ill and die.

To further frustrate public-health authorities, the Spanish flu killed both directly and by leaving victims vulnerable to secondary infections with bacterial pneumonia, which was often fatal even in the absence of the flu, particularly in the elderly or infirm. This muddled the causality picture. But because the Spanish flu had proven so stunningly contagious and pneumonia was so often found during autopsies of flu victims, the federal Census Bureau decided to use a single category in its mortality statistics for 1918: “deaths from influenza and pneumonia (all forms)” (Mortality Statistics, 1918). As frustrating as it is to epidemiologists and life-insurance actuaries, all statistical studies of the effects of the 1918 pandemic are riddled with uncertainty and approximations.

Among the new strategies: Researchers are dissecting the cloak that disguises influenza as it sneaks past the immune system, and finding some rare targets that stay the same from strain to strain, year to year. The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) also recommends that all Canadians over the age of 6 months get the seasonal flu shot every year.

A pandemic is a global outbreak of disease. An influenza pandemic happens when a new strain of the flu virus appears for which people have little or no immunity. As a result, it spreads easily from person to person around the world, causing widespread illness and death. Individuals, families, caregivers, healthcare workers and teachers can all take steps now to get ready for a flu pandemic before it happens.

Feb. 6, 2004. Researchers working separately at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California and at Britain’s Medical Research Council discover that the 1918 virus may have jumped directly from birds to humans https://pandemicinfosite.com/ rather than going from birds to pigs and then infecting humans. They say it explains why the 1918 strain was so deadly, since human immune systems aren’t prepared for viruses coming directly from birds.

International effort will be put to trying to control a pandemic at this early stage. However, influenza is highly infectious and because whole populations will be susceptible to the new virus, despite people’s best efforts it is likely to continue to spread.

If such a deadly strain rises, the response to this year’s severe flu season has revealed that health care professionals may be ill-equipped to respond to it, Poland argued. This free, downloadable software allows planners to estimate the effects of an influenza pandemic on their community in terms of hospitalizations, outpatient visits, and deaths.