How many Britains died from Swine Flu in 2009?

Answer 1

That total number is unknown, unfortunately. Only estimates are available, no complete confirmed counts have been able to be done for the entire pandemic period. The specifics and counts of cases are no longer being tracked by the World Health Organization (WHO) now that the pandemic has been declared over. Influenza cases are monitored, but specific H1N1/09 counts aren't available separately from other influenza reporting any longer.

The latest information about cases and deaths during 2009-2010 in the UK (separate British figures aren't available), is that there were 28,456 confirmed cases and 474deaths. This calculates to a mortality rate of those infected to be 0.02%, which is typical among all statistics. See more on mortality rate below:

Worldwide:

5 March 2010 -- As of 28 February 2010, According to the World Health Organization (WHO), worldwide more than 213 countries and overseas territories or communities have reported laboratory confirmed cases of pandemic influenza H1N1 2009, including at least 16455 deaths.

US:

3 March 2010 -- As of 12 February 2010, According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it is estimated* that since the beginning of the pandemic, the US has had approximately 57 million cases of A-H1N1/09 Pandemic Swine Flu and approximately 11,690 resulting deaths. Based upon this, an estimate of the mortality rate in the US from the pandemic is 0.02% calculated by the 57 million cases and typical percent of deaths.

In comparison, the CDC and World Health Organization (WHO) have estimated that with seasonal flu, "we see over 30 million cases in the United States. We see 200,000 hospitalizations and, on average, 36,000 deaths." (During the entire fall and winter flu season.) Based upon this, the average mortality rate of seasonal flu in the US would be 0.12 %.

*The CDC stopped keeping track of how many cases of H1N1 there were on an ongoing basis, due to incomplete counts in the reports. Most cases that are not complicated or requiring medical care aren't reported to the health departments and, of those, only a small number have had confirmation by laboratory testing. However, deaths from this infection have been being reported better and more have been confirmed, those numbers are more accurate. The CDC has developed a method of estimation of total counts based on the numbers of reported cases and deaths.

The statistics of this mortality rate variation between the seasonal flu and H1N1/09 Swine Flu, and other data gathered to date during the pandemic, are under study by epidemiologists. The Death Rate difference may be attributable to the fact that the especially vulnerable demographic group of the elderly (age 65 and older) suffers the majority of the cases and deaths from seasonal flu (because their weakened immune systems are unable to fight it off before their frail bodies must attempt to deal with the symptoms caused by another new strain of virus).

In contrast, the majority of cases of the pandemic swine flu are among the younger and healthier demographic groups, so that, except for the very young and those with underlying medical conditions, most are able to survive the disease. It is not fully understood yet why the elderly do not contract this virus subtype as easily as the typical seasonal virus subtypes, but speculation is that they may have acquired immunity through prior exposure to a similar virus strain sometime in their lives.