swine flu influenza medicine

According to the Health Protection Agency, the incubation period for swine flu (H1N1) (Time between infection and appearance of symptoms) can be up to 7 days, but is most likely to be between 2 and 5 days. It is, however, too early to be able to provide details on virus characteristics, including incubation term, with absolute certainty at now.

Diagnosis of swine flu (H1N1) is now based on an assessment of the person's symptoms, rather than having to wait for a swab test result. Health professionals will continue to test some sick people to ensure they keep getting up-to-date information about the New flu virus.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) says the new swine flu virus is highly contagious and is spreading from person to person.
Swine flu scatters in the same way as ordinary colds and flu.
The virus is scatter through the droplets that come out of the mouth and nose when someone sneezes or coughs.
If someone sneezes or coughs or and they don't cover it, those droplets to be able to scatter about 1 metre. If you're close to the someone you might breathe them in.

Or, if someone sneezes or coughs into their hands, those droplets and the virus within them are easily transferred to surfaces that the person catches, such as door handles, hand rails, telephones and keyboards. If you catch these surfaces and catch your face, the virus are able to enter your system, and you can become infected.

H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu)

Also called: Swine flu

Swine flu is an infection caused by a virus. It's named for a virus that pigs can get. People do not normally get swine flu, but human infections can and do happen. The virus is contagious and can spread from human to human. Symptoms of swine flu in people are similar to the symptoms of regular human flu and include fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue.
There are antiviral medicines you can take to prevent or treat swine flu. There is no vaccine available right now to protect against swine flu. You can help prevent the spread of germs that cause respiratory illnesses like influenza by

- Covering your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.

- Washing your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. You can also use alcohol-based hand cleaners.

- Avoiding touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread this way.

- Trying to avoid close contact with sick people.

- Staying home from work or school if you are sick.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Many people are confused about just how many patients have been infected with the new H1N1 flu, which in turn makes it hard to tell how bad the pandemic is, British researchers said on Tuesday.

But better methods of measuring the swine flu toll in real-time could help reduce some of that confusion, according to the team at Imperial College London.

And without this information, they said, governments are operating in the dark when assessing what their response should be.

"If you don't test people, you don't know how many people are out there who have it," Dr. Tini Garske, an expert in disease modeling who led the study, said in a telephone interview. "The number of confirmed cases doesn't tell you a lot."

The World Health Organization has confirmed 94,512 cases globally and 429 deaths from the new H1N1 swine flu, which was declared a pandemic last month.

But these numbers represent only a fraction of the real cases -- the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says at least a million people have been infected and the virus is spreading out of control.

Most countries are now only testing a sample of patients, and many people who become infected are not ill enough to even seek medical attention, let alone get tested.

Diagnostic kits for H1N1 are expensive, and most governments save them for when they are really needed.

But if no one knows just how many people are infected overall, with serious disease and with mild disease, how can anyone say how severe the pandemic is?

DEATH RATES

Writing in the British Medical Journal, Garske and colleagues said current case fatality ratios -- the number of deaths from swine flu divided by the total number of cases -- is only around 0.5 percent. This is similar to the death rate from seasonal influenza, which kills anywhere between 250,000 and 500,000 people globally each year.

But Garske noted this varies greatly from country to country. Unlike seasonal flu, influenza H1N1 is causing severe illness in previously healthy young adults and children.

"Accurately predicting the severity of this swine flu pandemic is a very tricky business, and our research shows that this can only be achieved if data is collected according to well-designed study protocols and analyzed in a more sophisticated way than is frequently being performed at present," Garske said.

"If we fail to get an accurate prediction of severity, we will not be providing healthcare planners, doctors and nurses, with the information that they need to ensure they are best prepared to fight the pandemic as we head into the flu season this autumn."

Garske's team outlined ways to improve estimates, including using individual towns as examples.