Have U.S. swine flu infections reached 1 million cases?
A story by AP reporter Michael Stobbe says one U.S. official has estimated that more than one million Americans may have become infected with the novel H1N1 swine flu at this point.
Stobbe attributes the estimate to Lyn Finelli, an official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Finelli gave a presentation at a meeting of the vaccine advisory committee in Atlanta on Thursday.
Currently, the CDC is reporting just under 28,000 confirmed or probable cases of the swine flu, with 127 deaths in the U.S. Those figures were as of last Friday and will be updated again this Friday am. The difference between the 28,000 actual and one million estimated figures is that the actual figures reflect testing for the flu virus, while the estimate Finelli provided is based on mathematical modeling. Such modeling assumes that the actual reported cases—arrived at because they represent acute infections or hospitalizations that aroused the suspicion of examining physicians that they might represent an infection by the novel H1N1 virus, or swine flu—are just the tip of the iceberg, with many more people infected with the virus suffering symptoms that do not prompt them to seek medical help.
And not all those who do seek medical help will necessarily arouse sufficient alarm on the part of health practitioners to warrant testing for swine flu. Hence, the one-million-case estimate, which also suggests that half the world’s cases of swine flu are right here in the U.S.
Health Spectator will report the CDC’s new confirmed and probable case counts as usual on Friday.
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