NZ - Health officials are undertaking a major study to find out how many New Zealanders have had swine flu.

[Sally Furniss]

Health officials are undertaking a major study to find out how many New Zealanders have had swine flu.
Scientists are trying to determine the level of immunity in the country to the H1-N1 virus, and plan to take blood samples from 2500 randomly chosen people.

A pilot study has already started at the Ropata Medical Centre in Lower Hutt, in Wellington.

Dr Stewart Reid says there is a reluctance to take part and contacting people via telephone is proving difficult.

"It's been rather more time-consuming and difficult to get people involved than we'd originally expected."

Dr Reid says the researchers thought more people would have been willing to be involved.

He says it's too early to gauge the level of immunity in the community.

http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/stories/2009/12/02/1245d8f89cd4

 

[gsgs]

Re: NZ - Health officials are undertaking a major study to find out how many New Zealanders have had swine flu.

> contacting people via telephone is proving difficult

why is it difficult ? It can even be automized ...
" press 1 , if you had ILI last season"

announce it in a newspaper before


2500 is a lot.
They should have done 25 , 250 before and the results
of the 25 should already be available.
I do feel that they are always trying to delay giving us info.

It would be particularly interesting to know, how many got it twice.

And urgent for estimating the vaccine effectiveness.