Swine flu measures scaled back as infection fears diminish
Mark Metherell June 18, 2009
THE Federal Government is reducing measures to check the spread of swine flu, releasing estimates showing the disease to be much more infectious but significantly less likely to require hospital admission than ordinary seasonal flu.
Without public health measures, up to four times as many Australians could be infected with swine flu compared with the infection rate for ordinary seasonal flu.
But the estimates prepared for the Government show that the hospital admission and likely death rate is a fraction of that suffered by Australians with seasonal flu, which claims 1000 to 2000 lives every year.
There have yet to be any deaths from swine flu in Australia.
There were 2024 swine flu cases here by late yesterday, with nine people in hospital, three of them in intensive care. The Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer, Jim Bishop, said it might be that the arrival of swine flu had led to an easier flu season in Australia this year.
Because of the mitigation measures, no more deaths from swine flu than from seasonal flu were expected.
"We hope we will do better than seasonal flu. We do not know …whether H1N1 09 [swine flu] will replace seasonal flu, but if it does, it will make the management of the disease easier to treat," Professor Bishop said.
The Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, announced yesterday that Australia would move to new flu alert arrangements, scrapping measures including widespread school closures and thermal screening at international airports.
The Government is also relaxing quarantine provisions and tightening distribution of antiviral medicines such as Tamiflu. These would be available from the national stockpiles for those people with moderate or severe disease or with vulnerable conditions.
But Ms Roxon said it was not appropriate to give antivirals to healthy relatives.
Measures will focus on early treatment of vulnerable people such as pregnant women and those with chronic diseases such as asthma and heart disease.
The new regime, officially called "pandemic phase protect", will begin first in South Australia and Western Australia within days and later in other states. NSW yesterday had 313 recorded cases, compared with Victoria's 1210.
Ms Roxon said the new phase recognised that swine flu was not as severe as originally envisaged when the health management plan for pandemic influenza was written last year.
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