Influential Commentary: Outbreak, Pandemic and Medical Response

Abstract

On June 11, 2009, the World Health Organization declared that a new strain of H1N1, popularly called the ‘‘swine flu,’’ is responsible for the ongoing flu outbreak. The alert level was elevated to Phase 6, marking the first global pandemic of this magnitude since the 1968 Hong Kong flu. Many hospitals have recently passed emergency regulations requiring that health care workers and volunteers who have direct patient contact, or whose activities are such that if they were infected with influenza could potentially spread it to patients, be vaccinated this year against seasonal influenza and the H1N1 virus. The mortality rate of the ‘‘Spanish’’ flu of 1917 and 1918 was 1% of the infected population. This influenza was an H1N1 strain, and research on the reconstituted virus shows that it was partic- ularly infective. The Spanish flu claimed 70 million lives. The medical community considered that flu to be one of the dead- liest to attack the human population, capable of sickening and killing a person on the same day.