Friday, May 29, 2009

New Scientist: The Invisible Pandemic

 


# 3280

 

 

More evidence today from an article in the New Scientist Magazine that indicates that overly narrow testing criteria for the H1N1 virus in Europe may be hiding community transmission of the virus.

 

The UK, along with many other EU countries, have recommended testing people with symptoms only if they have been to affected countries or had contact with a known or suspected case in the past seven days.

 

 

Today’s report comes on the heels of another report (see H1N1 In Europe: Hiding In Plain Sight?) last week on the artificially low numbers of positive tests, and Professor John Oxfords claims that thousands of infections are going undetected.

 

 

 

New swine flu cases point to invisible pandemic

13:17 29 May 2009 by Debora MacKenzie

Hospitals in Greece have identified H1N1 swine flu in two students who had no contact with known cases of the virus and had not been in countries with widespread infection. The infections were discovered even though the students should not have been tested for swine flu under European rules. The Greek authorities say this shows the rules must change.

 

Indeed, an investigation by New Scientist earlier this month showed that the EU rules would exclude exactly such cases and could make H1N1 appear much less widespread in Europe than it is.

 

Takis Panagiotopoulos of the Hellenic Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in Athens and colleagues reported on 28 May in Eurosurveillance, a weekly bulletin published by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm, Sweden, that two Greek men returning home from Scotland had tested positive this week for H1N1 swine flu.

 

Chance test

 

The two go to university in Edinburgh and had attended term-end parties at the end of last week. Both developed coughs and fevers at the weekend before flying back to Greece, where one went to hospital in Athens on Tuesday.

 

"The examining physician decided to take a pharyngeal swab, which was tested at the National Influenza Reference Laboratory for Southern Greece, although the patient did not meet the European Union and national criteria for the new influenza A (H1N1) testing," the team reports.

 

The swab was tested with a kit for H1N1 distributed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and was positive for swine flu. The student in Athens warned the second student, who was now in Thesaloniki. He also tested positive. Both cases were mild.

 

(Continue . . . )

 

 

The `useful fiction’ that community transmission of the H1N1 virus has yet to occur in Europe (or Asia, or Africa . . . .) has been bolstered by the relatively small number of positive H1N1 tests coming out of those regions.

 

Of course, by failing to demonstrate community transmission in another WHO region, the politically dicey decision to raise the pandemic alert level again can be postponed.

 

 

The New Scientist article is derived from this report that appeared yesterday in Eurosurveillance.

 

Eurosurveillance, Volume 14, Issue 21, 28 May 2009

Rapid communications

Cluster of new influenza A(H1N1) cases in travellers returning from Scotland to Greece – community transmission within the European Union?

T Panagiotopoulos ()1,2, S Bonovas1, K Danis1,2, D Iliopoulos1, X Dedoukou1, A Pavli1, P Smeti1, A Mentis3, A Kossivakis3, A Melidou4, E Diza4, D Chatzidimitriou4, E Koratzanis5, S Michailides5, E Passalidou5, P Kollaras6, P Nikolaides6, S Tsiodras1,7