January 5, 1999. Copyright, 1999, Graphic News. All rights 
reserved

FLU BUG YET TO PEAK
By Margot Nesdale

LONDON, January 5, Graphic News: THE FLU bug sweeping British  
workplaces clean is yet to fully rear its ugly head.
	Many Britons have been forced to take to their beds after being 
struck down with the nasty virus which has left front-line staff 
battling to hold the fort.
Doctors say the voracious bug-called the H3N2 Sydney flu - is set 
to peak across most of the country next week.
More than 45,000 victims were bundled up in their sickbeds over 
the festive season, according to the national influenza 
monitoring unit.
Hospitals, ambulance services and doctors were struggling to cope 
with the growing number of patients attacked by the virus.
Dr Douglas Fleming, the director of the Birmingham Research Unit 
of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said however that 
it was extremely unlikely infection levels would reach epidemic 
proportions.
The current level of infection is 94 cases per 100,000 people 
each week, a typical rate for this time of year. The last bad flu 
outbreak was in 1995, when 230 cases per 100,000  were recorded . 
In 1989, there were 580 cases per 100,000 and a major epidemic in 
1969 caused 1,180.
Dr Fleming said the bug was likely to hit hardest in north and 
central Britain next week, with infection rates likely to climb 
as high as 200 per 100,000. London's infection rates were lagging 
behind, he said.
The figure would have to reach 400 for experts to consider it 
anything unusual, he said.
The strain, first identified in Sydney about three years ago, is 
spread by sneezing and coughing, and causes fever, muscle and 
joint pain, headaches, sore throat and a dry cough.
While no all-purpose vaccine has been developed to tackle the 
ever-changing virus doctors recommend patients take paracetamol 
for pain and increase their fluid intake.
However a new missile in the fight against flu, a drug called 
zanamivir, is undergoing clinical trials in Australia and could 
eventually be approved for sale.
Zanamivir can be inhaled and has shown some initial success, 
decreasing the duration of symptoms and the rate of complications.
However it needs to be given within 30 hours of the onset of 
symptoms.
A second drug being trialled with similar results is GS 4104.
Two anti-flu drugs, amantadine and rimantadine, are already on 
the market but those agents have serious flaws and can cause 
confusion and other neurological side effects.
In 1989 26,000 people died from flu in the UK but the figure 
dropped to 13,000 in 1993, making an average of about 6,000 per 
year.
Less than half of the "at risk" patients, those aged 75 and over 
and those with chronic illnesses, were vaccinated last season.
In the U.S the total number of working days lost due to flu in 
1994 was 69.3 million.
And in Australia 4.2 million people out of a population of 18 
million risk getting the virus, but only half of them are 
vaccinated.
The worst-ever outbreak of flu was when Spanish Flu swept the 
world in 1918, killing more than 20 million people, sometimes 
within hours of the first symptoms appearing.
This was followed by epidemics of Asian flu in 1957, which caused 
70,000 deaths in the U.S alone, the Hong Kong flu in 1968 and 
Russian flu in 1977.
Public health experts warn that vaccines against any given 
influenza take about six months to produce - too long to do much 
good in the face of a fast-moving epidemic. 
/ENDS.

Sources:     Royal College of General Practitioners (Birmingham), 
The Lancet, Scientific American, International Influenza 
Education Panel