Flu Pandemic Has Begun

NEWS HIGHLIGHT

Flu Pandemic Has Begun
The World Health Organization told its member countries today it's declaring a flu pandemic – the first in 41 years.

June 12, 2009 – The
little virus that came out of nowhere, swine flu, has made it over the
pandemic threshold, prompting the World Health Organization to declare
Thursday that the globe is experiencing the first influenza pandemic
since the Hong Kong flu of 1968.

The new H1N1 virus, which burst onto the world’s radar a mere nine
weeks ago, overtook what had long looked like the most likely culprit
to “go pandemic” as flu watchers say, the H5N1 avian flu virus.

WHO Director General Dr. Margaret Chan announced the decision after
going over available evidence about the new virus’s behaviour and
spread with the WHO’s emergency committee, a group of experts which has
served as a sounding board for Chan during this fast moving outbreak.

“On the basis of available evidence  …  the scientific criteria for an
influenza pandemic have been met,” she declared at a news conference in
Geneva.

“We are satisfied that this virus is spreading to a number of countries and it is not stoppable.”
Many influenza experts have felt that reality has been clear for awhile.

A number have been critical about the fact that in official terms, the
world has been poised on the precipice of a pandemic for seven weeks as
swine flu spread from North America to Europe, Asia, the Middle East,
Australasia and South America.

Dr. Allison McGeer, a Toronto-based flu expert, suggested political and
societal concerns have mired the WHO in a declaration process that has
trailed behind the science.

“From a science perspective, anybody will tell you that this has been a
pandemic for weeks,” said McGeer, head of infection control at Mount
Sinai Hospital where she’s been dealing with seriously ill swine flu
patients for some time.

“You can understand why the World Health Organization is having trouble
but it does put you in this really odd situation of having a zebra out
there that you can’t call a zebra.”

Though some have called the swine flu virus “wimpy” because it causes
mild, seasonal flu-like disease in most people, its geographic gains
have been rapid and impressive.

By Thursday, infections had been confirmed in 28,774 people in 74
countries and 144 deaths had been attributed to the virus. In reality
hundreds of thousands more people have likely made a personal
acquaintance with swine flu.

Years of focus on the dangerous H5N1 virus has led some to equate the
word pandemic with catastrophe, a perception the WHO sought to soften
in recent days.

Chan urged countries not to overreact, and to recalibrate pandemic
plans if they were designed as responses to a severe pandemic. In the
WHO’s judgment, she said, this swine flu pandemic will likely be one of
moderate severity, though she warned that could change.

The WHO has insisted travel bans, border closings, trade embargoes and
the like won’t stop swine flu’s spread but will inflict economic pain.

But if some parts of the world are panicking, others are yawning, convinced swine flu is no more serious than seasonal flu.

In countries like Canada where the virus has been spreading for some
time, officials worked hard Thursday to get out the word that little
will change. Pandemic plans which were years in the making have been
activated for weeks.

“We in Canada have been dealing with H1 since the beginning. So going
from Level 5 to 6 only reflects broader spread internationally of what
we have already seen,” said Dr. David Butler-Jones, Canada’s chief
public health officer.

Canada, the third country to find cases and the third hardest hit to
date, has confirmed 3,047 cases in all provinces and territories but
Newfoundland and Labrador. Canada has recorded four deaths.
Butler-Jones said officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada are
working with the holder of Canada’s pandemic vaccine contract,
GlaxoSmithKline, to make pandemic vaccine. That contract ensures the
first pandemic vaccine produced at the company’s Ste-Foy, Que., plant
will be reserved for Canadians.

A spokesperson for GSK said Thursday the Ste-Foy plan has already taken
possession of the vaccine seed strain and is now growing up a seed
stock to be used to produce first trial lots and then commercial
batches of vaccine.

Many steps have to be taken before vaccine will be available, including
testing it for safety and to determine what sized dose -and how many
doses -each person might need for protection.

But Butler-Jones said if all goes well Canada could start holding swine
flu vaccine clinics in late October and finish vaccinating everyone in
the country who wants vaccine by Christmas.

In the U.S., the new head of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Tom
Frieden, said they’ve been operating in Phase 6 mode for some time. He
stressed the pandemic call doesn’t signify that anything has changed
about the virus itself or the disease it is causing.

“This is not at this point a flu that’s anywhere near as severe as the 1918 pandemic, for example,” he said.

Though the point appears not to be widely understood, the definition of
a pandemic relates only to the spread of a virus, not severity.

Some countries had pressured the WHO not to declare swine flu a
pandemic because of the current lack of virulence. In the end the WHO
resisted the pressure, though it agreed to issue a severity assessment
when it declared a pandemic.

A pandemic is declared when the WHO sees evidence of sustained spread
in the community in two different WHO regions. In recent weeks spread
in Britain, Spain, Japan and Australia has at various times threatened
to push the world across that threshold.

But some countries within that group appeared to be reluctant to be the
ones to trigger the call. For instance, a number of experts believe
Britain’s instructions to doctors on when to test impeded the discovery
of spread in the community.

Chan and her officials had discussions Wednesday with health officials
from the eight most affected countries -the U.S., Mexico, Canada,
Chile, Britain, Spain, Japan and Australia. She said the WHO confronted
some with media reports that conflicted with official statements.

In the end, all agreed that they had some degree of community spread
and that it was perhaps greater than their surveillance systems could
detect.

Instead of naming the country or region which took the virus across the
threshold, Chan dealt with them as an aggregate. “Collectively, (with)
this group of countries, we are satisfied there is community level
transmission.”

The weekly disease journal of the European Centre for Disease Control
was quicker to assign blame. The editors of Eurosurveillance declared
spread in the WHO’s Western Pacific Region -which contains both Japan
and Australia -was the deciding factor.

The WHO’s unwillingness to reveal which country or region had taken the
virus across the threshold was criticized by a flu expert who had
earlier suggested the agency’s scientific credibility was in peril
because of its delay in declaring a pandemic.

“While the announcement is welcome in terms of addressing the science,
the lack of transparency in terms of which country’s activities
factored in the decision is disappointing,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm,
director of the Centre for Infectious Diseases Research and Policy at
the University of Minnesota.

Chan suggested it wasn’t just geographic spread that influenced her
decision. She said the WHO is concerned the virus seems to be
preferentially infecting -and causing severe disease in some cases -in
children, young adults, pregnant women and vulnerable populations.

She mentioned specifically evidence of severe disease in aboriginal
communities in Northern Manitoba. Officials in Manitoba revealed
Thursday that 24 people in that province are in intensive care because
of swine flu and two-thirds of them are First Nations people.

That type of pattern of disease, which has been seen in earlier
pandemics, is different from seasonal flu, which hits young children
and seniors hardest.

Butler-Jones suggested Chan’s decision was reasoned and right.

“Clearly this is a virus which is taking hold and that fits, clearly, the definition of a pandemic,” he said.