Flu pandemics are rare, but can be deadly
BY JACLYN COSGROVE NewsOK.com
Sunday, January 06, 2013
OKLAHOMA CITY — It
wasn’t easy to tell a 78-year-old
man with a double bypass
he couldn’t have a flu shot.
Normally, he’d be the ideal
candidate.
But this was 2009, and there
was a shortage of vaccines for
H1N1.
“We were doing big clinics at
the local high schools and other
places where we were doing
thousands of people,” said David
Legg, a public health nurse
at the Oklahoma City-County
Health Department. “It was
just one flu shot after another.”
Click here to read the complete article at NewsOK.com.
By the numbers: Flu deaths
Influenza-associated
death was not a reportable
condition to the Oklahoma
State Department of Health
until the H1N1 pandemic in
2009.
Since 2009, the number
of deaths reported that
meet the surveillance
criteria for an influenzaassociated
death are listed
below.
Influenza season runs
Sept. 1 — April 30
| YEAR | DEATHS |
| 2009-2010: | 48 |
| 2010-2011: | 26 |
| 2011-2012: | 10 |
| 2012-2013*: | 2 |
*Through Jan. 1, 2013
Associated Images:
An emergency hospital during the 1918 influenza epidemic is set up at Camp Funston, Kansas. COURTESY / National Museum of Health and Medicine
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