Estimation of the burden of pandemic(H1N1)2009 in developing countries: experience from a tertiary care center in South India

• Published in: PloS one 2012-09, Vol.7 (9), p.e41507-e41507
• Main Authors: Moorthy, Mahesh, Samuel, Prasanna, Peter, John Victor, Vijayakumar, Saranya, Sekhar, Dipika, Verghese, Valsan P, Agarwal, Indira, Moses, Prabhakar D, Ebenezer, Kala, Abraham, Ooriapadickal Cherian, Thomas, Kurien, Mathews, Prasad, Mishra, Akhilesh C, Lal, Renu, Muliyil, Jayaprakash, Abraham, Asha Mary
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Biology; Child; Child, Preschool; Communicable Disease Control; Developing Countries; Female; Hospitalization; Humans; Illnesses; India; Infant; Infant, Newborn; Infections; Influenza; Influenza A; Influenza A Virus, H1N1 Subtype - metabolism; Influenza, Human - epidemiology; Influenza, Human - virology; Intensive Care Units; LDCs; Male; Medicine; Middle Aged; Mortality; Orthomyxoviridae; Outbreaks; Pandemics; Patients; Polymerase chain reaction; Population studies; Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction - methods; Respiratory diseases; Swine flu; Tertiary Care Centers; Time Factors; Trends; Viruses
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0041507

The burden of the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza might be underestimated if detection of the virus is mandated to diagnose infection. Using an alternate approach, we propose that a much higher pandemic burden was experienced in our institution. Consecutive patients (n = 2588) presenting to our hospital with influenza like illness (ILI) or severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) during a 1-year period (May 2009-April 2010) were prospectively recruited and tested for influenza A by real-time RT-PCR. Analysis of weekly trends showed an 11-fold increase in patients presenting with ILI/SARI during the peak pandemic period when compared with the pre-pandemic period and a significant (P