Influenza

Considering that New Zealand is a small, isolated country, surrounding solely by water with the only way for the Influenza virus to be brought in through air travel, the impact of the swine flu upon the nation was quite extensive. Between 1st April and December 31st, 2009 there were 3211 confirmed cases, 1122 hospitalisations (including 119 into ICU) and 35 (later found to be 49) deaths reported to the national notifications database (EpiSurv). Of that 49, 86% already had co-existing morbidities and associated conditions including respiratory illness, substance abuse and morbid obesity.

 

Infants, children and teenagers were the most at risk sectors, even leading to some school closures as the peak period (July-September 2009) coincided with the annual seasonal flu outbreak. During this time hospital admission rates and deaths from influenza were the highest they had been in the previous 15 years. The effects of the pandemic were minimised by having a good, nationwide, pre-existing pandemic action plan in place and the availability of a vaccine to protect against further outbreaks. 

 

According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention the United Stated of America experienced a total of 60.8 million cases, 274,304 hospitalisations and 12,469 deaths during the pandemic.  In order to compare fatality rates the 2009 population of both nations needs to be taken into account. This produce a estimation that one in every 88,163 New Zealanders died during the pandemic as opposed to one in every 24,605 Americans. As can been seen New Zealand was significantly less affected than America during the pandemic and the same applies for many other nations.