DENVER—The threat of another broad swine flu outbreak in Colorado is likely over for this season, but individuals could still be at risk, health officials said Thursday.
Colorado’s H1N1 outbreak peaked in October, when as many as 350 new cases were reported in a single week. The numbers dropped sharply after that. Fewer than 20 new cases a week have been reported since mid-December.
“There’s little likelihood we will have a big outbreak of H1N1 in the near future,” said Dr. Ken Gershman, chief of the communicable disease program at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
Individuals are still at risk of getting the virus if they haven’t developed immunity, either by getting vaccinated or by being exposed to the virus, he said.
“Given that H1N1 is still circulating, if you are in the wrong place at the long time, you could still get exposed,” Gershman said.
The Colorado outbreak wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but there was no single forecast on how severe it would be, he said. It’s also difficult to know what role swine flu shots played in restraining the outbreak because the flu had peaked before the vaccine was available in quantity.
Also unknown is how bad the outbreak would have been had there been no vaccine available, Gershman said.
“I think a lot of people got vaccinated. More could have gotten vaccinated,” he said.
About 24 percent of Coloradans were vaccinated for swine flu from October through January, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this month. That’s about the same as the national rate.
The vaccinations and the immunity people developed from being exposed to the virus were sufficient to develop “herd immunity,” where enough of the population is protected to keep a virus from spreading too far, said Dr. Connie Price, chief of infectious diseases at Denver Health Medical Center.
Dr. Michelle Barron, medical director for infection control at the University of Colorado Hospital in Denver, said the virus wasn’t as aggressive as initially feared.
That, combined with the fact that many people were looking for the vaccine when the outbreak began, helped lessen the impact, she said.
Barron said it’s impossible to predict what the next season will bring, but she said the swine flu vaccine will be included in the seasonal vaccine, so people shouldn’t have to get multiple shots.
More than 2,000 people have been hospitalized for the flu in Colorado since late August, and 69 deaths have been linked to the flu.
Nationwide, swine flu has sickened about 60 million Americans and killed about 12,000 since it was first identified in April 2009. The death toll from the H1N1 virus is about one-third of the estimated deaths from a regular flu season.
———
On the Net:
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment flu page:
Flu vaccine clinic locator:
