# 3559
I’m always a bit slow to embrace these sorts of reports, preferring to see if the announced trend continues a week or two from now. But, if true, this may signify that the peak of H1N1 infections in Victoria has passed.
This report from Jason Gale of Bloomberg News.
Melbourne Lab, Doctors Find Swine Flu Infections Are Abating
By Jason Gale
July 30 (Bloomberg) -- Less than two months after a surge in swine flu cases in Melbourne helped persuade the World Health Organization to declare a pandemic, infections are abating in Australia’s second-largest city.
The frequency of flu-like illnesses diagnosed by the city’s doctors fell by a third last week from the previous week and is the lowest since late May, according to a report yesterday by the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory. The pandemic H1N1 strain accounted for all flu viruses tested by the government lab last week.
Melbourne was one of the cities hardest hit by H1N1 outside North America when the WHO declared the first influenza pandemic in 41 years on June 11. The decline in cases is also being reflected in a drop in hospitalizations for flu and may mean that Melbourne has seen the worst of the current wave of infections, said Vincent Pellegrino, an intensive care doctor at the city’s Alfred Hospital.
“We do seem to have passed the worst phase,” Pellegrino said in a telephone interview yesterday. Across Victoria, 26 people are hospitalized for flu, Australia’s health department said yesterday, down from 34 a week earlier and 59 on July 9.
