Main developments in the past 72 hours
- ECDC likely to stop publishing Daily Updates;
- Weekly Influenza Surveillance Overview published;
- A total of 2 290 fatal cases in Europe and EFTA countries and 11 996 in the rest of the world have been reported up to date.
This report is based on official information provided by national public health websites or through other official communication channels. Reported number of confirmed 2009 pandemic influenza A (H1N1) cases admitted to hospitals and intensive care, by country, as of 18 January 2010, 09.00 CEST in EU and EFTA countries are in Table 1. An update on the number of confirmed fatal cases for the world and Europe is presented in Table 2.
ECDC likely to stop publishing Daily Updates for the pandemic
The ECDC Public Health Event Strategy Team (PST) will decide today whether to downgrade the crisis management activities to Public Health Event level 0 (PHE 0). ECDC has been operating its pandemic response in under a crisis management plan since April 2009, diverting significant resources from other parts of the organisation to respond in a robust and coherent way. Although the pandemic is far from over and considerable uncertainties on developments in the coming months exist, currently the workload related to pandemic response has clearly decreased. The ECDC activities related to the pandemic will continue under a reinforced influenza programme.
If the PST decides to downgrade the PHE level to 0, we will stop publishing the Daily Updates. The surveillance work will be reported on Fridays in the Weekly Influenza Surveillance Overviews (WISO) with a technical overview of influenza development in a technical successor to the previous Flu News along with the Weekly Executive Update giving a digest of the technical reports and reporting on ECDC activities.