H1N1 expected to replace seasonal flu in coming years
By: Leah Fabel
Examiner Staff Writer
October 29, 2009
Vaccination seasons in the coming years likely will feel far less chaotic as the swine flu replaces the seasonal flu as the illness to reckon with.
"Over the course of the next year or two, H1N1 will likely supplant the seasonal flu," said Steven Salzberg, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. He added that a similar virus "replacement" happened after the 1967-68 flu pandemic.
When a new virus comes along, he said, old flu strains tend to die off.
"In a pretty short time, we'll be back to vaccinating only once," Salzberg said.
At that point, states and counties will be back to mundane dispersal of ample vaccinations, as opposed to the endless lines and daily shortages characterizing this flu season.
The current seasonal flu vaccination fends off three strains with a common ancestor in the 1918 flu pandemic that lasted two years and killed more than 50 million people worldwide.
"The new H1N1 has been in pigs till this year, while the other strains have been in humans," Salzberg said.
And it's done a number on them. In Virginia, nearly 14 percent of emergency room and urgent care visits for children between newborn and 4 years old were for flu symptoms, according to health department data for mid-October. Among 5- to 24-year-olds, flu visits jumped to 16 percent. In August, both groups hovered around 3 percent.
In Maryland, positive tests for swine flu have soared to nearly 300, up from about 10 in September, according to the state health department. The actual number of positive cases is much higher, but most patients forgo an official diagnosis and simply stay home to recover.
The median age of swine flu patients is about 17 years old, according to federal health officials. Nationally, the virus has infected more than 1 million people and has resulted in more than 2,400 deaths, mostly among people with complicating conditions.
