University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Euro Surveill. 2012 Apr 5;17(14):20139.
Influenza pandemics are often perceived as single-year events, but the burden of previous influenza pandemics has in reality been spread over a number of years. The aim of this paper is to compare the burden of influenza in the pandemic year 2009/10 with that in the year immediately after (2010/11) in England. We compared four measures of disease. There was a greater burden of severe illness in 2010/11 compared with 2009/10: more deaths (474 vs 361), more critical care admissions (2,200 vs 1,700), and more hospital admissions (8,797 vs 7,879). In contrast, there were fewer general practice consultations in 2010/11 compared with 2009/10 (370,000 vs 580,000). There was also much less public interest in influenza, as assessed by number of Google searches. This is a worrying finding, as by the time of the second influenza season, much had been learnt about the potential impact of the influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 virus and an effective vaccine developed. We suggest that a widespread assumption of 'mildness' led to insufficient ongoing action to prevent influenza and hence to avoidable influenza-related deaths. This offers a lesson to all countries, both for future influenza seasons and for pandemic preparedness planning.
流感大流行通常被视为单一年度事件，但实际上，以往流感大流行的负担已持续多年。本文旨在比较 2009/10 年大流行年与随后一年（2010/11 年）英国流感的负担。我们比较了四种疾病指标。与 2009/10 年相比，2010/11 年严重疾病负担更大：死亡人数更多（474 例比 361 例），重症监护病房入院人数更多（2200 例比 1700 例），住院人数更多（8797 例比 7879 例）。相比之下，2010/11 年的全科医生就诊次数比 2009/10 年少（37 万次比 58 万次）。谷歌搜索次数评估的流感关注度也大大降低。这是一个令人担忧的发现，因为在第二个流感季节到来时，人们已经了解到甲型 H1N1pdm09 病毒的潜在影响，并开发出一种有效的疫苗。我们认为，对“温和”的普遍假设导致对预防流感的持续行动不足，从而导致了可避免的流感相关死亡。这为所有国家提供了一个教训，无论是对未来的流感季节还是对大流行准备规划都是如此。
