'Something Different' Happening With New Flu

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2. Swine flu Q&A: Dr. Seltzer answers your questions
3. Dr. Seltzer will answer more selected questions online. Submit your question
4. 59 PICTURES RELATED TO SWINE FLU
5. US swine flu cases rise to nearly 34,000
6. Swine Flu News
7. Canada reports four more swine flu deaths
8. Southern California students cleared from Chinese quarantine
9. WHO starts shipping antiflu drug to poor countries
10. Britain braces for 100,000 swine flu cases a day
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12. White House to Hold H1N1 Flu Summit
13. Argentine regions declare swine flu emergency
14. New swine flu case takes India's tally to 129
15. A chronology of the H1N1 outbreak.

WHO working on formulas to model swine flu spread

The World Health Organization said Wednesday it is working to mathematically model the spread of swine flu in an attempt to better understand how the outbreak developed from a handful of cases to a global epidemic in less than two months.

WHO brought together over 20 independent experts beginning Wednesday for the three-day meeting in Geneva.

"They will be working together to describe and predict the behavior and impact of the pandemic, and demonstrate potential outcomes of proposed intervention efforts," spokeswoman Aphaluck Bhatiasevi told The Associated Press.

The meeting comes as it becomes clearer that actual case numbers may be far higher than the agency's tally of officially diagnosed infections.

According to WHO's latest update Wednesday, a total of 77,201 confirmed cases and 332 deaths have been reported in over 110 countries.

U.S. swine flu cases may have hit 1 million

As many as 1 million Americans now have swine flu, U.S. health officials said Thursday, adding that 6 percent or more of some urban areas are infected.

“We knew diagnosed cases were just the tip of the iceberg,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University infectious diseases expert who was in Atlanta for the meeting of a vaccine advisory panel.

Lyn Finelli, a flu surveillance official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, made the 1 million estimate in a presentation to the vaccine panel. The number is from mathematical modeling, based on surveys by health officials.

Continued spread signals ‘something different’ happening with new strain

America's count of swine flu cases has risen to 21,449 cases and the number of deaths have nearly doubled to 87.

The continued spread signals the new strain of H1N1 flu is causing “something different” to happen in the United States this year — perhaps an extended year-round flu season that disproportionately hits young people, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The latest numbers, released Friday by the CDC is a jump from last week's count of 18,000 cases and 44 deaths.

Worldwide, the number of confirmed cases reached 44,287, the WHO reported Friday. WHO says cases increased by more than 10 percent in two days.

Figures provided by the global body show Argentina, Britain, Canada, Chile, China, Philippines and Thailand all reported a large rise in cases.

A total of 93 countries had reported cases to WHO by Friday.