Swine flu may hospitalise 1.8 million people in the US alone this year, filling intensive care units to capacity and causing “severe disruptions” during a resurgence, in the autumn scientific advisers to the White House have warned.
The H1N1 Pandemic (2009) may infect as much as half of the population and kill 30,000 to 90,000 people, double the deaths caused by the typical seasonal flu, according to the planning scenario issued by the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology.
Intensive care units in hospitals, some of which use 80 per cent of their space in normal operation, may need every bed for flu cases, the report said.
The virus has sickened more than 1 million people in the US and infections may increase this month as pupils return to school, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
If swine flu patients fill too many beds, hospitals may be forced to put off elective surgeries such as heart bypass or hernia operations, said James Bentley with the American Hospital Association.
"If you have 1.8 million hospital admissions across six months, that's a whole lot different than if you have it across six weeks," said Mr Bentley, a senior vice-president of the Washington-based association, which represents 5,000 hospitals.
The scenario projections were "developed from models put together for planning purposes only," said Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the CDC, at a briefing in Atlanta last night. "At the end of the day, we simply don't know what this upcoming flu season is going to look like. It could be severe, it could be mild, we just don't know."
The models were based on past pandemics, and the CDC is working on new projections based on the latest data gathered from swine flu patients, Mr Skinner said.
Those estimates should be available "soon," he said, without further specifying.
President Barack Obama was urged by his scientific advisory council to speed vaccine production as the best way to ease the burden on the health care system. Initial doses should be accelerated to mid-September to provide shots for as many as 40 million people, the panel said in a report released yesterday.
Members also recommended Obama name a senior member of the White House staff, preferably the homeland security adviser, to take responsibility for decision-making on the pandemic.
"This isn't the flu that we're used to," said Kathleen Sebelius, the US health and human services secretary. "The 2009 H1N1 virus will cause a more serious threat this fall. We won't know until we're in the middle of the flu season how serious the threat is, but because it's a new strain, it's likely to infect more people than usual."