The estimate shows the difficulty in tracking the effect of a pandemic as it’s unfolding, Cecile Viboud of the National Institutes of Health and Lone Simonsen of George Washington University wrote in an editorial. The WHO, which was criticized for exaggerating the H1N1 threat, said during the outbreak that the toll would end up being “unquestionably higher” than that reported to it by national authorities. “Laboratory-confirmed deaths are gross underestimates of influenza-related mortality because of the lack of routine laboratory tests and difficulties in identification of influenza-related deaths,” they wrote.
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Researchers led by Fatimah Dawood at the Atlanta-based CDC’s influenza division developed a mathematical model using data from 12 countries on flu cases that were diagnosed by a patient’s symptoms alone, and not by a laboratory test. They hypothesized that the risk of death is higher in some countries than others.
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“The study underscores the significant human toll of an influenza pandemic,” Dawood and colleagues said in an e-mailed statement. “We hope that this work can be used not only to improve influenza disease burden modeling globally, but to improve the public health response during future pandemics in parts of the world that suffer more deaths.”
Eighty percent of the deaths were probably in people younger than 65 years, the authors wrote.
To contact the reporter on this story: Simeon Bennett in Geneva at sbennett9@bloomberg.net
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By Simeon Bennett - Jun 25, 2012 6:30 PM ET
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