# 4014
In keeping with the global flavor of today’s blogging, the ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) releases a weekly influenza surveillance report, similar to the the US FluView and Canada’s FluWatch.
Not every European country reports every week to the ECDC, and the depth of surveillance and reporting may vary from one nation to the next, so week to week and cumulative numbers may be a bit hard to interpret.
Still, we get some excellent snapshots of subsets of information, including demographic information (age, gender, vaccination status, underlying conditions) of many of those hospitalized with SARI (Severe Acute Respiratory Infection).
This week’s complete report (Pdf file) can be downloaded at this link. Click on the charts and maps below to enlarge.
Main surveillance developments in week 45/2009
This first page contains the main developments this week and can be printed separately or together with the more detailed information following.
- Sentinel surveillance of influenza like illness (ILI)/ acute respiratory illness (ARI): Bulgaria, Iceland, Ireland, Norway and Sweden reported very high levels of intensity. Poland and the UK (Northern Ireland) reported high levels of intensity and 14 countries reported medium intensity.
- Virological surveillance: Sentinel physicians collected 2 978 respiratory specimens, of which 1 283 (43%) were positive for influenza virus. All of the influenza A sub-typed viruses were type A(H1N1)v.
- Aggregate numbers of pandemic H1N1 2009: As most of the countries stopped counting total number of cases, the aggregated reporting will be adjusted and presented in a new form at a later date.
- Hospital surveillance of severe acute respiratory infection (SARI): Seven hundred and sixty-two SARI cases were reported of which twenty-two (36%) had no known underlying medical condition.
- Qualitative reporting. No qualitative indicator data are available yet.
Hospital surveillance – severe acute respiratory infection (SARI)
Weekly analysis – SARI
In week 45/2009, 762 SARI cases were reported. Since the beginning of this surveillance, six EU countries have reported 1 254 cases including 20 fatalities (1.6%. Table 5).Except for the current week, the trend in numbers of SARI cases has been steadily increasing since week 36, most probably due to improved reporting.
The female/male ratio in week 45 was approximately 1 and 78% of cases were younger than 45 years (Table 6).
Since the beginning of the season, a large majority of SARI cases related to influenza infection were caused by the pandemic virus (Table 7). Of SARI patients reported during the current week, 31% received oseltamivir (Table 8), but it is too early for any conclusion to be made regarding the potential benefits of such treatment.
Twenty-one SARI patients needed intensive care treatment in week 45, of whom 76% required ventilator assistance (Table 9). Twenty-two (36%) of the 61 SARI cases reported in week 45 had no known underlying medical condition; five (8%) were pregnant and 17 (28%) had a chronic lung disease or asthma (Table 11).
