Experts urge public to go for vaccinations before spike

BEIJING - The ongoing seasonal flu epidemic will likely peak next month in most parts of the country, and no evidence suggests there will be a pandemic as serious as 2009's, a leading epidemiologist said on Tuesday.

"The public needs not panic over the increase in flu cases in recent months, given that winter is usually the flu season in China," Zeng Guang, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told a flu pandemic symposium staged by the World Bank and the Ministry of Health in Beijing.

But Zeng reminded the public to get seasonal flu vaccinations, as more flu cases are expected in the coming weeks.

Fewer than 5 percent of people on the Chinese mainland have received flu shots - far fewer than the United States' 27 percent, experts pointed out.

This year's epidemic is similar to previous years' in terms of strain varieties, viral activity and prevalence, Beijing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deputy director He Xiong said.

Type B and the H3N2 are causing most of this year's cases, government figures showed.

However, a 3-year-old boy in East China's Jiangsu province came down with the rare European avian flu-like H1N1 swine influenza A, local media reported on Tuesday.

He said it is unlikely the H1N1 variety will become this year's dominant strain, because many people were already infected in 2009 and about 100 million people were vaccinated in a nationwide program since early 2010.

People have become increasingly fearful of the flu, and particularly of the H1N1 strain, as deaths have recently been reported in several countries, including Italy, Denmark and Jordan. A serious H1N1 case was reported in Beijing last week.

"There is no need to worry about H1N1. Both the H1N1 vaccinations early last year and the recent seasonal flu shots can protect people from the strain," He said.

Zhong Nanshan, an epidemiologist in Guangdong's provincial capital of Guangzhou, said all kinds of flu viruses, including H1N1, could be lethal.

"Timely detection and proper treatment can avert severe flu cases and related deaths," he said.

Zhong said clinical guidelines he compiled with more than 20 experts will soon be issued to ensure a better flu response nationwide.

In August 2010, the World Health Organization declared the end of 2009's H1N1 flu pandemic, which killed more than 18,000 worldwide since it appeared in April 2009.

China Daily