Swine Flu Claims a British GP.

[Big Orange]

Uh oh:

GP and child latest swine flu victims
last updated: Monday 13 July 2009, 18:10pm

A six-year-old girl and a GP have been confirmed as the latest victims of swine flu, taking the UK death toll to 17.

Chloe Buckley, from north west London, died on Thursday at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington. Tests are taking place to determine whether she had any underlying health conditions.

And Bedfordshire GP Dr Michael Day died on Saturday in the Luton and Dunstable Hospital. Tests show he had swine flu although the coroner is working to establish the precise cause of his death.

Dr Paul Hassan, senior partner at the Priory Gardens health centre in Dunstable, where Dr Day worked, said: 'This news has come as such a shock to us all and we are completely devastated.

'Dr Day was a work colleague and also a personal friend to everyone at the practice. I know the news will also come as a great shock to our patients, many of whom have known him for many years.'

Dr Day's immediate family, practice staff and any patients who have been in recent contact with him are being assessed to determine if they have swine flu symptoms.

Head teacher Sara Benn led tributes to Chloe Buckley at her school, St Catherine's in West Drayton, north west London.

'It is impossible to put into words the sorrow that the whole school feels in such tragic circumstances,' she said.

'Chloe was a bright and tenacious student with a keen interest in sports. She will be missed by her fellow pupils and her teachers at the school.'

News of the latest UK deaths coincides with claims the H1N1 virus bears a disturbing resemblance to the strain which caused the 1918 flu pandemic, estimed to have killed between 40 million and 100 million people.

A team of international academics says the similarity lies in H1N1's ability to infect the lungs, making it more likely to cause pneumonia.

Nearly 10,000 Britons have been confirmed with swine flu after it spread to the UK from Mexico. However, hundreds of thousands more people in the UK are thought to have the virus.

© Independent Television News Limited 2009. All rights reserved.

Orange

[Psychic_Sandwich]

We can, however, take heart in the fact that the 10,000 'confirmed' people infected is bullshit. A whole load of PCTs simply stopped testing at all once it became clear that the virus was loose in the general population, so that number basically includes everybody with a bad case of any flu. I know this because my father is the development manager for a practice in Gillingham, and he complains loudly that every single report about this on telly is complete bullshit for this exact reason.

[Big Orange]

OK, this is getting more serious:

U.K. Opens Swine Flu Advice Center as Deaths Double in Week
By Charlie Duxbury and Reed Landberg

July 16 (Bloomberg) -- The U.K. government said it will open a swine flu advice center three months ahead of schedule after deaths from the disease more than doubled in a week.

The Department of Health will open a National Pandemic Flu Centre for England next week, giving advice by telephone and Internet to those who fear they may be infected, Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson said in London today.

The service is intended to relieve pressure on the National Health Service, which is planning for a worst-case scenario of up to 65,000 deaths from the current onslaught of the virus. It will have the authority to prescribe anti-viral drugs, unlike the NHS Direct telephone service. Twenty-six people died of swine flu in England by July 15, up from 12 on July 9.

“The National Pandemic Flu service is intended as an alternative route of access to the NHS for the public,” Donaldson said at a press conference. “It is to take pressure off front-line services to allow them to concentrate on the most ill.”

Some parts of England have become swine flu “hot spots, ” putting medical staff under strain, Department of Health figures released today show. The West Midlands region reported 2,582 cases, which is about 40 percent of the total for England.

The Department of Health was planning to open the National Pandemic Flu Centre in October and acted today because of pressure from primary-care trusts in the swine flu “hot spots,” Donaldson said.

London’s Tower Hamlets Primary Care Trust has reported the highest rate of consultations for flu-like symptoms in the U.K. Doctors reported an incidence rate of 759 per 100,000 people there. Neighboring City and Hackney Teaching PCT is second on the list.

Bloomberg.com

[Bedlam]

How are things going in other countries at the moment? Currently the UK newspapers tend to be upadating fatalities by the day we've had health bosses mentioning 100,000 being infected a day in a few months and possibly 65,000 fatalities by the winter but I havn't heard anything about the rest of the world.

How are things in the US, Mexico, Canada, Australia and probably more inportantly India, China and Africa? Are you getting daily fatalities, are infections still patchy or more or less wide spread?

Updates anyone?

[Lusankya]

In Australia, there are over 10,000 cases and 31 confirmed deaths from swine flu, though keeping in mind the fact that regular flu kills about 1000 people a season, that's really not so bad.

Swine flu has also become the dominant form of flu in Victoria:

Nearly all state's flu 'is swine flu'


July 08, 2009
Article from: Australian Associated Press

RESEARCH claims that 99 per cent of Victorians who are down with the flu, almost certainly have swine flu.

Head of epidemiology at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory, Heath Kelly, says that of the 73 people who tested positive for influenza at clinics monitoring flu viruses during the last week of June, 99 per cent had the H1N1 virus.

"It's amazing, swine flu has taken over the flu season,'' Dr Kelly told The Age.

"If you've got the flu, you've almost certainly got swine flu.''

The research, published in an online edition of the Medical Journal of Australia, also showed the median age of Victorians with the virus was between 18 to 22 years.

Australia has had 6353 laboratory-confirmed cases of swine flu with 13 deaths, including seven in Victoria.

One of the doctors (a Gynaecologist) where my mum works got swine flu, but fortunately he was on holiday the week before he came down with it, so he wasn't in contact with patients at the time.

[J]

How are things in the US, Mexico, Canada, Australia and probably more inportantly India, China and Africa? Are you getting daily fatalities, are infections still patchy or more or less wide spread?

Updates anyone?

Canada stopped counting at 10,000 cases, so far we have around 50 deaths. As far as I can tell we're basically treating it as just another flu.

[El Moose Monstero]

How are things going in other countries at the moment? Currently the UK newspapers tend to be upadating fatalities by the day we've had health bosses mentioning 100,000 being infected a day in a few months and possibly 65,000 fatalities by the winter but I havn't heard anything about the rest of the world.

It is worth mentioning that the 65000 fatalities is, according to government health officials, not actually based on any specific scientific data on the virus itself, rather on the assumption that it's going to be x amount worse than seasonal flu, and to give the NHS a value to aim at in terms of targetting and planning.

[Ziggy Stardust]

The United States has been seeing a pretty steady increase in new cases and fatalities, and health officials are certainly worried. However, it is not as bad as it could be, yet. But we are real worried about what happens come this fall.

I don't know about India and China, but I know Argentina, Chile, and Australia are all being hit pretty hard at the moment. Interestingly, Africa and Indonesia don't appear to be hit bad, yet, but that is probably more a factor of it not being reported than it not being present.

[DaveJB]

Turns out neither of the deceased in question died from swine flu, at least not directly. It's already been published in various news sources that the GP's death was apparently from heart failure, and it turns out that the girl's death was in fact from a secondary infection she developed as a result of tonsillitis, though the flu may have weakened her immune system and thus contributed to her demise. Link

Flu girl died from septic shock

A six-year-old girl with swine flu died of septic shock after suffering tonsillitis, it has been announced.

Results from a post-mortem examination revealed Chloe Buckley of West Drayton in west London, had tonsillitis caused by streptococcus A bacterium.

Health officials have not ruled out the possibility that swine flu contributed to her death on 9 July at St Mary's hospital, Paddington, west London.

Some 29 people have now died in the UK after contracting swine flu.

Announcing the results of the post-mortem examination, Dr Simon Tanner, regional director of public health for London, said: "We would once again like to extend our deepest condolences to Chloe's family at this difficult time and ask that the media respect their wishes to be allowed to come to terms with their loss in private."

Chloe, who contracted the virus in the UK, attended St Catherine's School in West Drayton.

The school has closed early for the summer break following her death.

Her parents, Michael and Jacinta, released a statement following her death on 9 July saying they were satisfied with the medical care Chloe had received and asked to be left alone to grieve.

By the way, that death statistic? Since there have been 60,000 estimated UK victims of swine flu, that means that in this country it has a horrifying death rate of... 0.048%. Of course, the real problems from this virus are going to be the societal disruption it causes, especially since it's striking in the summer holidays and seems almost totally unaffected by seasonal factors.