Disturbing news from the Indonesian Ministry of Health that says 80% of the people who contract H5N1 Avian Influenza (AI), will die from from the infection:
"Four AI New Cases at the End of January
29 Jan 2008
Entering last week in January 2008, there are 4 more AI cases, based on RT PCR (Real Time Polimerase Chain Reaction) test in laboratories of National Institute of Health Research & Development (Balitbangkes) MOH and Eijkman Molecular Biological Institute. Those 4 cases are Nas (Tangerang District, Banten), MIY (Depok, West Java), and Res and Vir (both from East Jakarta).
Since the first case found in mid July 2005, number of AI cases in Indonesia by January 28, 2008 reaches 124 cases with 100 of them dead. The Case Fatality Rate (CFR) is 80.6%."
Some have argued that the CFR for AI is skewed because there may be many instances where nonfatal AI is not reported or mistakenly diagnosed as seasonal influenza. Dr. Niman @ Recombinomics has stated that high CFR rates for AI are not inflated and presents an elegant argument here.
Putting these numbers in perspective:
- A 2003 study of SARS in Hong Kong (1,755 SARS cases and 299 deaths) says that the CFR for SARS was approximately 17%.
- A recent WHO report that analyzed H5N1 infections from December 2003 thru April 2006 found a CFR of 56% (203 cases, 113 deaths).
- The total WHO CFR for all H5N1 cases confirmed since 2003 is 63%.
How does this relate to a possible pandemic? Nobody knows for sure, but informed calculations project that assuming a clinical attack rate of 25%, a pandemic could kill 1.7 million Americans. The assumed CFR for this projection is 2.3%.
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