During the coming holidays, two things can happen, says health director Caroline C. Baisley: People keep their eye on the ball when it comes to preventive measures to keep H1N1 from spreading; or they get wrapped up in the holidays and turkeys and presents and let down their guard, and the flu escalates.
“Nationwide we’re off the charts right now,” Ms. Baisley says of the H1N1 infection, which is now in all 50 states and D.C. “This can be very dangerous. It’s a novel virus, we have no immunity to it and it’s spreading like wildfire.”
Last week the Centers for Disease Control released new estimates that paint a fresh picture of how the disease has been spreading. In the past six months, the report says, 22 million Americans have come down with H1N1 flu and 3,900 have died, with about 540 of those deaths pediatric.
The numbers tracking the spread in the Connecticut area, Ms. Baisley said, are fluid, a moving target. The first wave, which lasted from April 1 to Aug. 30, saw 1,996 people come down with the virus in Connecticut.
As of Nov. 10, just three months into the second wave, which will last through the spring, there are already 440 confirmed cases, with Hartford County leading the way at 146, New Haven County 112, and Fairfield running third with 87.
The age range is from 1 to 81, but the mean is 18, evenly split between male and female.
One reason the pandemic may be affecting more younger people than older ones, Ms. Baisley said, is that anyone born before 1957 may have gotten vaccinated during the swine flu epidemic of 1976, or have been exposed to it, thus giving them a slight edge. That virus had components similar enough to today’s H1N1 that it could be acting like a vaccine from the past.
“Scientifically, it makes sense,” says Ms. Baisley. It could also explain why older people are much more vulnerable to the regular seasonal flu. Were it not for this imbalance, things could get bad.
And they are bad enough. “We anticipate there will be many more hospitalizations,” she said. Nationwide, there are 200,000 hospitalizations in a cycle of seasonal flu, with 37,000 deaths. “What will those numbers be when these two viruses collide?”
