tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
A MAN has been diagnosed with swine flu in North Wales ? five months after the end of the second pandemic wave, the Western Mail can reveal.
The man, who has not been named, was understood to be immuno-suppressed because of an underlying condition when he contracted the H1N1 virus.
Public health experts today said the case did not indicate that swine flu is poised to infect thousands of people in Wales as it did last year. But they warned low levels of the H1N1 virus are circulating alongside other flu viruses.
Dr Brendan Mason, a consultant epidemiologist at Public Health Wales, said: ?If you look across Europe there are a number of flu viruses, including swine flu, circulating at low levels. This is probably quite normal for a summer season.
?But, for whatever reason, whether it?s human behaviour, temperature and humidity or because the virus itself doesn?t take hold, we don?t tend to see large numbers of people falling ill with flu.
?It is there as a source for winter illnesses but when that starts we do not know.?
The current flu consultation rate ? the number of people seeing their GP with flu-like symptoms ? is 1.3 per 100,000.
At the peak of the first wave of pandemic flu, in July 2009, there were more than 150 consultations per 100,000 population.
...
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/w...flu-makes-an-unwelcome-return-91466-26600311/
The man, who has not been named, was understood to be immuno-suppressed because of an underlying condition when he contracted the H1N1 virus.
Public health experts today said the case did not indicate that swine flu is poised to infect thousands of people in Wales as it did last year. But they warned low levels of the H1N1 virus are circulating alongside other flu viruses.
Dr Brendan Mason, a consultant epidemiologist at Public Health Wales, said: ?If you look across Europe there are a number of flu viruses, including swine flu, circulating at low levels. This is probably quite normal for a summer season.
?But, for whatever reason, whether it?s human behaviour, temperature and humidity or because the virus itself doesn?t take hold, we don?t tend to see large numbers of people falling ill with flu.
?It is there as a source for winter illnesses but when that starts we do not know.?
The current flu consultation rate ? the number of people seeing their GP with flu-like symptoms ? is 1.3 per 100,000.
At the peak of the first wave of pandemic flu, in July 2009, there were more than 150 consultations per 100,000 population.
...
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/w...flu-makes-an-unwelcome-return-91466-26600311/