Since mid-December, Vietnam has reported 24 cases of the A(H5N1) strain of avian influenza, of which 13 have been fatal.
As a benchmark, the deadliest influenza pandemic in the past century, the Spanish influenza of 1918 to 1919, had an estimated mortality rate of around 2.5percentt but killed tens of millions of people because it spread so widely.
Officials bristle at criticism that their messages and plans have led the public to equate the word pandemic with the Spanish influenza of 1918-19, the worst recorded pandemic in history, killing 20 million to 100 million people.
It has already killed as many people as the lower fatality estimates of the Great Influenza of 1918, and may well equal the common estimate of that toll -- 40 million -- by 2010.
This first wave was extremely mild, more so even than ordinary influenza: of the 10,313 sailors in the British Grand Fleet who became ill, for example, only four died.
Many scientists believe that the great flu pandemics of the 20th century -- the Spanish influenza of 1918-19, the Asian flu of 1957-58 and the Hong Kong flu of 1968-69 -- began when new flu strains moved from birds to people.
A threshold probability of influenza of 42% would dictate changing from the rapid testing strategy to a 'treat regardless' strategy.
We conclude that multiple preventive measures in addition to high vaccination rate is necessary for preventing influenza of HCWs working at LCTFs.
Vaccination was associated with a reduction in the risk of hospitalisation with influenza of 51.5% (95% CI: 41.6%, 59.7%) in all patients, and a reduction of 50.7% (95% CI: 40.1%, 59.3%) in the target population for vaccination.
In March/April 2009, Mexico experienced an outbreak of respiratory illness, due to a new influenza of swine origin virus, which spread rapidly via human-to-human transmission, and became pandemic (A/H1N1pdm).
Degenerate amplification primers and amplicon capture probes were designed enabling the detection of low and highly pathogenic avian influenza of the H7 subtype from the Eurasian and North American lineages and the Australian sub-lineage.
