Spike In US Child Swine Flu Deaths

Child deaths from the swine flu have shot up to 76 in the U.S., including 19 in the past week alone, said officials with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday.

"Nineteen more pediatric deaths for influenza were reported to us this week. We’re now up to 76 children having died from the 2009 A(H1N1) virus," said senior CDC official Anne Schuchat.

"To put that in context, in the past three years, the total pediatric influenza deaths ranged from 46 – 88. We’ve already had 76 children dying from the A(H1N1) virus and it’s only the beginning of October," she said.

The U.S. flu season runs from August through March.  However, the three previous seasons did not include simultaneous outbreaks of seasonal and A(H1N1) flu.

Child deaths from A(H1N1) flu had been on the decline during the warm summer months after peaking this spring, Schuchat said, but were beginning to "shoot up again" with the onset of the autumn flu season.

She urged parents to have their children vaccinated against the flu.

A large vaccination campaign got underway this week in an attempt to inoculate millions against swine flu. 

The vaccine is currently available only in the form of a nasal spray produced with a live, but severely weakened, A(H1N1) virus.  Clinical trials of the spray have demonstrated that it gives "a robust immune response" with one dose in children over the age of nine. Younger children will require two doses of the vaccine and infants are not permitted to receive it at all.

Children are believed to be at particularly at risk from the A(H1N1) virus, and are one of five groups assigned a high priority for the vaccination.  The CDC is advising that all children be inoculated against both the seasonal and A(H1N1) influenza.

The agency reported on Monday that the global number of swine flu cases has spiked by at least 24,000 in two weeks, and now exceeds 343,000 cases. Deaths from the virus have grown to more than 4,100.

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