A Better Way To Clean

As the news and information concerning the Swine Flu (more properly “H1N1”) outbreak continues to evolve the public is, quite reasonably, left wondering what to think.

The challenge is that our Public Health officials are simultaneously understanding and managing this situation and the news media are then disseminating this information quickly. My intention with this post is to provide some perspective and a framework for interpretation as things progress.

Last week the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that we had reached Phase 5 out of the 6 phase WHO Pandemic Phase Description. This is a relatively straightforward tool that describes the global spread of a virus. It DOES NOT provide any insight into the severity of the illness. Just because a virus spreads quickly to reach a Phase 5 or 6 on the Pandemic Phase Description, doesn’t mean that it will produce severe illness.

The severity of a pandemic has its own measure tracked separately by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) it is called the PSI or Pandemic Severity Index . In the case of H1NI Swine Flu while it would appear it will probably reach Phase 6 on the WHO rating scale for its global spread, thus far the severity has been mild outside of the initial reports from Mexico.

Understanding the numbers and information that we hear from the media help us to sort through all of this and make good decisions. .

Image Source: World Health Organization

This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 5:59 pm and is filed under H1N1 (Swine Flu). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.