According to Sky News, a total of 191 people have died in Mexico so far this year from the AH1N1 flu virus – a 15 percent increase in one week.
The country’s Health Secretariat says 6,066 cases and 207 deaths have been confirmed from the different strains of flu in 2012.
Of these, 90 percent were caused by the AH1N1 strain, which is also also responsible for 191 fatalities.
The secretariat previously reported that the AH1N1 flu virus took 166 lives up to February 23.
Around 85 percent of patients who died of influenza this year in Mexico had not been vaccinated and 73 percent suffered from another ailment, such as diabetes mellitus, obesity and arterial hypertension, the secretariat said in a communique on Friday.
The AH1N1 virus broke out in Mexico between March and April 2009.
Locally, the alert for the disease was in force up to the end of June 2010, by which time some 1,300 deaths had occurred and more than 70,000 people had contracted the disease.
Three seasonal flu viruses are currently active in Mexico – AH1N1, AH3N2 and influenza B – but the country’s available flu vaccine provides effective protection against all of them.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance a more in-depth understanding of critical issues facing the world. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 USC Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to:http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
HIV/AIDS kills millions of people (~5m) every year, and the number is increasing. It is usually a far more significant health issue than influenza which rarely causes deaths when it is endemic. Pandemic influenza is different because it spreads rapidly and has a higher mortality rate, so it can kill many people in a short period of time before the outbreak burns out. The 1918 pandemic alone probably killed more people (20-100m) than have ever died of HIV/AIDS (~25m), and it did this in months rather than years.
Type A flu virus is constantly changing and is generally responsible for the large flu epidemics. The influenza A2 virus (and other variants of influenza) is spread by people who are already infected. The most common flu hot spots are those surfaces that an infected person has touched and rooms where he has been recently, especially areas where he has been sneezing.-..`;