April 29, 2009

Pandemic Level Advanced to a Stage 5

written by Avram Nemetz, M.D.

This update is as of Wednesday afternoon.

Tracking through the day's flu-related events, one can see the realization setting in that the present outbreak is going to be a long-term experience.

The World Health Organization has advanced our Pandemic level to Stage 5.

Before the WHO was willing to certify a Stage 5 event, they were requiring confirmation of sustained influenza outbreaks in communities removed from the original source of the infection-but which also were not occurring in a confined institutional setting such as a high school. As documented spreading of influenza occurs, notably among schoolchildren in New York City, the barrier for Stage 5 has been breached.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan declared. "All countries should immediately now activate their pandemic preparedness plans," speaking to reporters in Geneva. "It really is all of humanity that is under threat in a pandemic."

Confirmed swine flu cases had reached nearly 100 in the U.S. today, spread across eleven states.

A well-known model of the speed with which influenza can be expected to spread came out of Los Alamos, NM. See the clip below, which is still the tightest, clearest education on basic flu and pandemic issues you can find, produced by Affiliated Physicians two years ago.

Watch Video

Go to 7min 15sec of the 8:05 long clip. On Day 1, ten people infected with a new strain of influenza virus land in an airport in Los Angeles. On Day 50, there is a cluster of many flu cases around Southern California, and scattered pinpoints of flu around the country. By Day 90, as exponential spread continues, the entire country is flooded with influenza.

If our situation is the same as the model, St. Francis Prep is the epicenter of the outbreak on April 20. In fifty days, June 10, the entire metropolitan New York area would be in the midst of an influenza outbreak. By the end of July, no area would be influenza-free.

This is just a model, but epidemiologists take this seriously as an expected rate of spread of the flu virus if it is left to develop without intervening mitigating factors, such as school closings, cancellation of public events, restrictions on travel, anti-viral medication, etc.