Death rates and mutations
I don't want to end the week on an alarming note, and - let's face it - there's been enough alarmist reporting about H1N1 swine flu.
But I would like to draw your attention to a couple of issues which many of you are likely to pick up elsewhere on the web or perhaps in the papers.
The first is a big jump in the global death toll. The World Health Organization said the number of deaths was up around 1,000 on a week ago, reaching at least 7,826 worldwide since the H1N1 virus emerged in April. That should neither surprise nor alarm you. We are now getting into the peak flu season. Seasonal flu kills several hundred thousand very elderly and frail people each year. The difference with swine flu is that the majority of deaths are in the under-65s.
On a more positive note, the WHO said that the epidemic may have peaked in parts of the northern hemisphere. That seems to be the case in the UK and in the United States, which has had several weeks of falling levels of flu.
Secondly, I have picked up via that two patients in France, in different hospitals, have died from mutated H1N1 swine flu. (For those who don't know, the 91Èȱ¬ monitoring service is based in Caversham in Reading; it listens to news broadcasts from around the world and provides accurate translations.)
The monitoring translation of La Chaine Info Television went like this:
French newsreader: "The health authorities dreaded this. The H1N1 virus is in the process of mutating. The phenomenon reported in Norway has also been detected in France in two deceased patients who were not related in any way and who were in hospitals in two different cities. This mutation could increase the virus's ability to affect certain airways, as well as the lungs."
Read like that, it seems pretty scary, and it is certainly not good news that mutations are occurring. But, as has been pointed out by me and by many of the wise men and women who post comments here, mutations are what we should expect with flu. Flu is an RNA virus in which genetic replication is pretty poor and which makes lots of mistakes. It's the reason that flu viruses drift and the reason we need a new flu jab every winter.
The mutations reported in France have been seen in Norway and in several other countries, and .
The French mutation has been found in two cities, but we need to know a lot more about it before becoming unduly alarmed. The patients may have been immuno-compromised, making them more susceptible to mutated viruses, and we don't have any evidence that mutated strains are spreading in the wider community.
To sum up, mutation and deaths are sadly unavoidable when it comes to H1N1 swine flu. But this pandemic is still reassuringly mild for the vast vast majority of those infected.
I'm 
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