H1N1 Pandemic Officially Over, Says WHO

(would that be the pandemic which never occurred? And now it's over?--jef)

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H1N1 Pandemic Officially Over, Says WHO; Cites Lessons Learned
August 10, 2010, 10:45 AM ET

The swine flu pandemic is officially kaput, per the World Health Organization, which is charged with determining this sort of thing. “We are now moving into the post-pandemic period, said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan on a conference call with reporters, citing the consensus of the organization’s Emergency Committee. “The new H1N1 virus has largely run its course.”

That doesn’t mean the virus is gone, of course, just that it is expected to recede into the semi-anonymity of other circulating flu viruses. There may still be “localized [H1N1] outbreaks of different magnitude,” Chan said, but out-of-season outbreaks are no longer being reported.

Chan said public-health authorities were aided by “pure good luck” in that H1N1 didn’t mutate to a more lethal form or develop resistance to antiviral treatments and that the vaccine developed for use against it was effective. And she said WHO was correct in its response to the pandemic, which some criticized as overly alarmist. But she did add that in the future, a “more flexible” approach to pandemic preparedness guidelines would allow WHO to present best-, intermediate- and worst-case scenarios and to adjust predictions as a pandemic evolves.

That was one of the lessons she said the agency took away from the H1N1 pandemic; the other was the need to better communicate through social media.

H1N1 is one of the viruses protected against by the latest iteration of the seasonal vaccine, which every year targets the strains public-health authorities deem most likely to be a threat in the upcoming flu season. This year’s vaccines have already been approved by the FDA and shipped to distributors, and Chan urged people to be protected against H1N1 because much is still not known about whether and how it will manifest this year.