H1N1 Flu – WHO Mulls Post-Pandemic Period

Hong Kong – The World Health Organization (WHO) said it will convene a meeting of experts to decide whether the current H1N1 influenza pandemic has subsided enough to enter into a “post-peak period.”By Park Hongki

“I think that the designation of a post-peak period or a transition period is really a way of helping national authorities to look ahead to the future and to begin planning,” Dr Keiji Fukuda, the Special Adviser to the Director-General for Pandemic Influenza, told a press conference Thursday in Geneva, Switzerland.

Right: The H1N1 virus. Photographed by Cybercobra. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Licence.

Experts from the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee will meet at the end of this month to discuss the post-peak period.

According to the WHO’s 2009 Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response Guidelines, the post-peak period refers to when the virus activity worldwide has sufficiently dropped, but there is still a chance of additional waves of disease spreading across the regions.

There are a total of six phases established by the health agency, and phases five and six are defined as peak levels at which human infections occur in more than two countries. Then, there are post-peak and post-pandemic periods. When the activity reaches seasonal level, the WHO declares the last stage.

Fukuda did not rule out the possibility of local-level outbreaks, even in times of the transitional period, adding that new cases of human-to-human transmissions have been reported in Senegal.

Although the world is seeing a general decline in the level of H1N1 activity …  the virus continues to be active in Northern Africa, and parts of Eastern Europe and Asia.

So, far, the number of laboratory-confirmed deaths from H1N1 swine influenza reached 15,174 in 209 countries at the end of last month.

“Remember that this is not a good estimate of the total deaths attributable to H1N1. It is only the ones confirmed in laboratories,” said Nyka Alexander, WHO communication officer. “When the pandemic is over, scientists will be able to make an estimate, and we expect the number to be much higher.”