World Health Organization Declares Swine Flu Pandemic
Yesterday, the World Health Organization Declared a swine flu pandemic, with the virus spreading to distinct regions of the world, infecting nearly 30,000 people on all seven continents. However, the organization does say that the pandemic is only moderately severe and gives caution against the public overreacting.
On the World Health Organization website, they posted an article saying that this is the start of a 2009 influenza pandemic, but the virus is spreading under close watch. There has never been a pandemic detected so early and watched as closely as the swine flu, which is due to years of developing technology in preparation for a pandemic.
The report says that they have some early snapshots that depict the spread of the virus and the range of illnesses that it can cause, thanks to reports from countries, thorough investigations, and monitoring the swine flu so closely. They have reason to believe the pandemic will be of moderate severity on a global level, in the early days at least. However, severity of the virus can vary from one country to another.
The World Health Organization also said that an overwhelming amount of patients with the virus experience only mild symptoms, making a fast and full recovery, usually without any medical treatment. The number of deaths from the swine flu is small around the world, but they don’t see that there will be a sudden jump in these cases.
In the novel H1N1 virus, younger people are generally infected more, and they have found that a majority of the confirmed swine flu cases are among people who are under 25 years old. Only about 2% of these cases (in some countries) develop into a sever illness, which rapidly progresses to life-threatening pneumonia.
Most of these severe and fatal cases have been among adults between 30 and 50 years old. This is a significantly different pattern from what is seen during the seasonal influenza epidemics, where most fatalities occur in frail elderly people. A majority of these cases also occur in people who have underlying chronic conditions.
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