H1N1 flu getting downgraded to seasonal strain

Iowa has weathered the H1N1 flu pandemic, but it likely will be later this year before health agencies declare it officially over.

State epidemiologist Patricia Quinlisk, who serves as the Iowa Department of Public Health's medical director, said Wednesday Iowa had 41 confirmed deaths and 659 hospitalizations attributed to the H1N1 flu virus. But, she said, the actual number could be up to 170 victims who died from pneumonia or other maladies where the flu virus was a contributing factor using “extrapolations” of confirmed and probable hospitalizations between Sept. 1, 2009, and last April 30.

Overall, nearly 400,000 Iowans were estimated to have had flu-like symptoms associated with the pandemic – which represents about 13 percent of the state's 3 million residents – and the number of people hospitalized for H1N1 ranged from 1,252 up to 2,834 based on the extrapolations used by the federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention, although the confirmed number was 659, she said.

“This met the scientific definition of a pandemic, but probably not what people in their minds would have thought of as a pandemic in that it was milder than we thought, fewer people got hospitalized and certainly fewer people died than what might have been expected when people hear the word pandemic,” Quinlisk said. “It was a unique virus and nobody had any immunity to it so that met our definition of a pandemic.”

Because a large number of Iowans received vaccinations for the potential deadly H1N1 flu strain or exhibited symptoms of the disease over the past year, H1N1 likely will be categorized with other seasonal flu strains for record-keeping purposes in the future, she said.

However, Quinlisk said H1N1 flu still could hit children particularly hard again next fall and she advised parents to get flu shots for young people at the onset of the next flu season.

The state medical examiner said Iowa's confirmed numbers of H1N1 cases and deaths was “the tip of the iceberg” because the state uses a “very tight definition” to make certain the count is truly representative of an outbreak even though the track models indicate the incidence among Iowa's population is much higher.

“We were very fortunate that it wasn't as bad as it could have been,” Quinlisk told reporters. “I don't think we cried wolf. We said it's coming, it did come, it caused outbreaks, it caused a lot of people to get sick, it just wasn't as bad as we had feared – which was good.

“We did what we had to do,” she added. “The public health system and medical system responded the way it needed to just in case it had been really bad. We are just lucky that it wasn't.”

Quinlisk said it likely will be later this year before federal officials or the World Health Organization declares that the risk of pandemic has ended given that the disease may still strike areas of the southern hemisphere where flu outbreaks are less prevalent.

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