Swine Flu Deaths in Europe Doubling Weekly, Health Agency Says

By Andrea Gerlin

Nov. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Swine flu deaths in Europe doubled in three of the last four weeks, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said.

Eighty-four people in 31 European Union and European Free Trade Association countries died from swine flu last week, compared with 43 the week before, Stockholm-based ECDC said in a bulletin on its Web site. Two weeks ago, 49 people died, up from 24 and 12 the previous weeks, the agency said.

“We are globally entering the acceleration phase” of the pandemic, Denis Coulombier, head of the ECDC’s unit of preparedness and response, said in a telephone interview late yesterday. “We are heading toward the peak for sure.”

The region’s swine flu outbreak has been most severe in northern countries such as Ireland, Iceland and the Ural region of Russia, according to the World Health Organization’s regional office in Copenhagen. Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands are also experiencing significant levels of the illness, the WHO said in its Nov. 6 weekly report.

A total of 414 people in Europe have died from swine flu since the outbreak began in Mexico and the U.S. in April, ECDC said. The figure includes 155 deaths in the U.K., 73 in Spain, 31 in Italy and 30 in France since the beginning of the pandemic.

Almost 80 percent of all swine flu cases in Europe have occurred in people under 30 years of age, according to a risk assessment published by ECDC on Nov. 6.

Young People

“In the acceleration phase, it’s not a surprise that the younger ones are the ones who are most contributing to the spread,” Coulombier said. “It doesn’t mean at the end of the wave you will have the same pattern.”

ECDC was established five years ago by the European Union to assist its member states in responding to communicable diseases. Its statistics are probably “gross underestimates” because health-care systems, laboratory testing, surveillance and definitions used to identify cases vary across Europe and affect reporting, the agency said.

The Geneva-based WHO estimated on Nov. 6 that 482,300 people worldwide have been sickened by the H1N1 virus that causes swine flu and 6,000 have died.

Russia has confirmed 4,560 cases of the disease, almost 4,000 of them since Oct. 6, the state public health service Rospotrebnadzor said on Nov. 6. Nineteen people aged 20 years to 53 years had died as of Nov. 2, the majority of them from pneumonia after failing to seek medical attention, the agency said.

Cold Weather

Cold weather and humidity have spurred Russia’s swine flu outbreak, said Oleg Kiselev, head of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Influenza Institute in St. Petersburg. The pandemic is expected to peak in the country in December, Kiselev said.

“We are planning to vaccinate as many as 20 percent of the population, which will cut the number of swine flu cases by half and significantly reduce the death toll,” Kiselev said in a telephone interview on Nov. 10.

Swine flu immunization programs are under way in most European countries. Risk groups such as pregnant women and people with existing medical conditions are among the first people getting the shots.

An estimated 620,000 people in England, about 1 in 82, had contracted swine flu through last week. About one-fifth of those hospitalized for the illness last week were in intensive care, the highest level since the pandemic began, Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson said.

Projected Peak

The pandemic is projected to peak in the U.K. this month, Neil Ferguson, a professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College in London, said through his spokeswoman Emily Lyons on Oct. 29.

Admissions to Dutch hospitals for swine flu doubled over the previous week for the second week in a row, according to the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. Seven people died from the illness last week, bringing the total number to 17.

Norway had 6,300 confirmed cases of swine flu as of Nov. 4, according to the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Sixteen people had died from the illness as of Nov. 9 and all but two of them had risk factors, the institute said.

The Norwegian government temporarily removed the requirement for a prescription for Roche Holding AG’s Tamiflu and GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s Relenza last week, enabling pharmacies to directly dispense the antiviral drugs. It also started an intensive-care registry to track severely ill swine flu patients last month.

Sweden had 647 laboratory-confirmed cases of swine flu in the week ended Nov. 1, compared to 350 cases in the week ended Oct. 25 and 197 cases in the week ended Oct. 18, according to the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control. A total of 2,771 cases have been recorded since May, and three people have died, all of them middle-aged and suffering from underlying medical conditions.

The pandemic is at the beginning of its cycle in Sweden, the institute has said.

To contact the reporter responsible for this story: Andrea Gerlin in London at agerlin@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 11, 2009 00:50 EST