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FED: Swine flu "not behaving like a deadly pandemic"

By Danny Rose, Medical Writer
05 Jun 2009 6:36 PM
Subject: FED: Swine flu "not behaving like a deadly pandemic" FED: Swine flu "not behaving like a deadly pandemic"

SYDNEY, June 5 AAP - The swine flu is "not behaving like a deadly pandemic", says an Australian flu expert.

But as the number of cases climbs towards 1,000 since Australia saw its first community-level transmission two weeks ago, Professor Robert Booy also says it is vital the nation does not drop its guard.

"We're yet to have a death in Australia and we're into the many hundreds of cases, that's telling us something," Prof Booy said.

"For the great majority of people this will be a relatively mild illness, but because it is a novel infection more people than normal will get influenza this winter."

Prof Booy is head of clinical research at the National Centre for Immunisation Research & Surveillance based at the University of Sydney.

He said the A(H1N1) human swine flu was, in the main, being transmitted in Australia by students and young adults and not those older than 50, who appeared to have some natural protection.

Despite the rising number of cases, Prof Booy said efforts to slow the spread of the virus also appeared to be working.

These steps have included quarantining the newly infected and school closures, with Queensland children who attended the State Of Origin rugby league match in Melbourne told not to go to school for seven days.

South Australia and Tasmania have also imposed similar policies to quarantine children - infected or not - returning from a holiday in Victoria.

"There is very little community transmission in most of Australia, apart from Victoria," said Prof Booy.

"Victorians have been unfortunate ... they have just been unlucky.

"It has got into the schools and once it is in there it is hard to quell."

In the United States, only about one in every thousand people proven to have caught swine flu have died.

Prof Booy said the virus had proven to be deadly to traditionally high-risk people with chronic medical conditions - chronic conditions of the heart, lung, kidneys and liver, and diabetes - and pregnant women.

While Australians with the virus were yet to suffer any serious complications, Prof Booy said a heightened level of public concern was justified and the swine flu could not be dismissed as posing only the same risk as seasonal flu.

"Some commentators ... have gone public this week criticising the attention given to swine flu," he said.

"They say it's no different to seasonal flu and what's all the fuss?

"In fact, since the very first week of this `media circus' it has been apparent that the virus was not behaving like a deadly pandemic virus as I, among others, pointed out."

Prof Booy said despite this, there were several major reasons why Australia should not drop its guard.

A matched vaccine was still weeks away, he said, as pharmaceutical company CSL has indicated it could be ready by late July at the earliest.

Australia's incidence of swine flu was also still far from its anticipated peak, which experience with the seasonal flu indicated would occur around August.

Across a typical winter, seasonal flu can infect up to 10 per cent of the population while swine flu could infect up to 25 per cent of Australians, meaning more at-risk people would be infected.

"Normally the number of cases of flu rises in Australia over June and July and peaks in August. So we're going into a rising peak," Prof Booy said.

There was also a risk that after millions of infections, the virus could further mutate making it "far more virulent, or nasty, than it currently is", he said.

"Then when you consider the many more millions who will fall ill in Africa and Asia, the level of concern rises even further," he said.

"But mostly because they have no effective western drugs, no intensive care and scant likelihood of being prioritised for the vaccines being developed."

AAP dr/sn/de =0A

FED: Swine flu "not behaving like a deadly pandemic"