The World Health Organization on Thursday declared the recent H1N1 influenza outbreak a global pandemic.
The severity of most cases has been “moderate,” but nearly 30,000 confirmed cases have been reported in 74 countries, said Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the organization.
“On the basis of available evidence, and these expert assessments of the evidence, the scientific criteria for an influenza pandemic have been met,” Chan said in a prepared statement. “We are in the earliest days of the pandemic. The virus is spreading under a close and careful watch.”
According to WHO, an “epidemic” occurs when there are more cases of a disease than normal. A “pandemic” is a worldwide epidemic of a disease.
Investments made in pandemic preparedness over the past five years will start to pay off, Chan said, as public health officials continue to respond to the outbreak.
The United States and other countries began preparing for a pandemic influenza virus five years ago when a strain of avian or bird flu appeared in Asia and showed promise to become the world’s next pandemic.
Chan noted that while a majority of H1N1 or “swine” flu cases have involved healthy people under age 25, most of the severe and fatal cases have been in adults between 30 and 50 years old. The virus also attacked people with underlying chronic conditions, such as asthma, obesity, diabetes and autoimmune disorders.
Late Thursday afternoon, officials from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment announced that a Butler County adult had been identified as the 98th confirmed case in the state.
In Kansas, most of the H1N1 cases have been relatively mild, though seven have resulted in hospitalization. No deaths have been recorded.
KDHE officials said they were not surprised by WHO’s decision to declare the virus a pandemic.
“The WHO’s action today is an important reminder that this entirely new flu virus is still here,” Dr. Jason Eberhart-Phillips, state health officer and director of health at KDHE, said in a prepared statement. “New cases are still occurring in Kansas as we head into summer, and we have every reason to believe that caseloads will escalate when the regular flu season begins sometime in the fall.
“As the virus infects more people around the world, it has more opportunities to exchange bits of its genetic material with other flu viruses, which could alter the severity of illness it could cause in the months ahead,” Eberhart-Phillips said.
While the pandemic phase level has been elevated, the Kansas response to the virus remains the same, he said.
“Every step we can take to interrupt the spread of this virus buys us time to develop a safe and effective vaccine, the only sure way to protect the public in a full-blown pandemic,” Eberhart-Phillips said.
Those steps include careful monitoring of virus activity throughout the state, voluntary isolation of people who are sick with the infection, exclusion of potentially infectious persons from schools and workplaces, and information sharing with the public so that everyone can protect themselves and people around them.
Eberhart-Phillips urged schools and employers to prepare for a potential major outbreak later this year.
“School administrators, business owners and other employers need to be thinking now about the continuity of their operations should large numbers of people become ill in the fall,” he said.