| GEO Health|
| Swine flu makes an unwelcome return|
| Updated at: 1143 PST, Monday, June 07, 2010|
LONDON: 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.
The new case of swine flu in North Wales brings the number of confirmed cases of H1N1 reported to Public Health Wales since May 2009 to 665, although the actual number of people who have had the virus will be significantly higher.
Of these confirmed cases, 452 people were admitted to hospital and 64 of these were admitted to intensive care or high-dependency units.
There were 28 deaths in Welsh residents who had tested positive for swine flu last year, during the two pandemic waves of infection.
The first case of swine flu in Wales was confirmed in a 31-year-old man from Caerphilly borough who had just returned from the US a year ago at the end of May. Across Europe there has been one swine flu-related death in the past month, taking the European death toll to 4,880 since April 2009.
The World Health Organisation said the most active areas for transmission of swine flu are currently in parts of the Caribbean, Central America and Southeast Asia – particularly Singapore, Malaysia, and Bangladesh – where low-level circulation is occurring.
Worldwide there have been some 18,110 deaths.
Dr Mason said how the swine flu virus behaves in the southern hemisphere during the coming months will give an indication of what level of flu activity the northern hemisphere can expect during the winter.
“Last year we saw more flu activity than we had seen in the last 10 years,” he said.
“This year we’re not expecting to see the same levels. A number of people in Wales will either be immune because they have already had the virus or because they have been vaccinated so there will be less susceptible people in the population.
“People in the at-risk groups – children under five and all those with chronic illnesses – can still be immunised with the single antigen swine flu vaccination.
“When the seasonal flu vaccine comes on line later this year it will include swine flu and will be targeted at the over-65s.”
The latest figures suggest that 44% of people in the clinical risk groups have had the swine flu jab – for children under five who are at clinical risk the take-up rate was 52%.
But in otherwise healthy children under five, just 27% have had the vaccine.
Dr Mason added: “Pandemic flu viruses of the past become the seasonal flu viruses of the future and sometimes they can circulate for decades as the predominant seasonal flu virus.
“Hopefully by the time we get to winter we will be in an even better position in terms of protection.
“We will have higher levels of immunity to protect individuals but that will also have an impact on community transmission.
“We will be better placed than other less well off countries to deal with swine flu.”