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CDC Briefing on H1N1 Oct. 13, 2009

A review of 1,400 hospitalizations from ten states and large cities participating in a CDC influenza surveillance system suggests some risk factors for serious complications from H1N1 swine flu.

According to Dr. Anne Schuchat of the CDC, of 1,400 adult hospitalizations, 26 percent of patients had asthma, 10 percent had diabetes and 6 percent were pregnant.

Schuchat said more than 9.8 million doses of vaccine have been made available to states, and more is rolling out all the time.

To find public sites where vaccine may become available, go to http://www.flu.gov or http://www.vdh.virginia.gov.

Virginia health care workers have already started getting vaccinated. The Richmond Ambulance Authority last week started vaccinating workers with the nasal spray version of the vaccine.

Some Canadian provinces are delaying giving seasonal flu shots after an unpublished study suggested giving the seasonal flu shot increases risk of getting the H1N1 flu.

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a story on the situation.

The Canadian action has also been covered by The Globe and Mail , Web MD, The Canadian Press.

More information is available from archives of news briefings of the Public Health Agency of Canada.

CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden, when asked recently about the research at an Oct. 1 briefing, said:

“In terms of the media reports coming out of Canada, there are reports that the—in some analyses, people who received the seasonal flu vaccine were more likely to get h1n1 infection. We have looked at our data at the CDC nationally. I have looked carefully at the data from New York City where we had a very large outbreak and lots of information about what vaccine was received. The Australians have looked at it and published their information. And in none of those data is there any suggestion that the seasonal flu vaccine has any impact on your likelihood of getting h1n1. It doesn’t protect you at all and there’s no suggestion from any of the other data sets that it increases your risks. If data is published in the scientific literature, but all means, we would love to see it. If there’s preliminary data, we would love to see it. But nothing that wove seen suggests that that is likely to be a problem.”

http://www.flu.gov/