It’s a good thing when bad forecasts do not pan out. For example, last November Ukrainian doctors predicted that flu and acute respiratory viral infection (ARVI) cases would peak in late December-early January. The reason for this was a flu virus mutation, particularly the spread of a new kind of virus type A, known as Solomon Islands. However, according to the Ukrainian National Flu and ARVI Center at the Ministry of Health, the illness rate is under control. In the last two weeks the number of cases of respiratory disease in 10 control cities, including Kyiv, Donetsk, Odesa, Lviv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Symferopil, has not reached the epidemic threshold. Instead, a certain decrease in the number of such cases has been observed.
The health ministry’s press-service informed The Day that in the last, 52nd, week of 2007 the number of flu and flu-like cases in the monitored cities was 47,264, which is 6.8 percent lower than during the 51st week (50,661). A considerable decrease in the illness rate was observed during the first week of 2008, with the general number of cases reaching just over 24,600.
During the first week of the New Year the health ministry noted the highest respiratory infection rates in Lviv, Vinnytsia, Chernihiv, and Kyiv, but they are lower than those seen during the corresponding period last year (except Lviv). Although most of the stricken are children from 7 to 14 years old, the first week of the New Year brought a decrease in the number of respiratory infections among them as well as among pre-school children. The reason is obvious: children are on vacation. Only 0.75 percent of the sick, mostly children, were hospitalized during the first week of 2008.
However, in view of the resumption of classes at educational establishments and the return of workers to their jobs after the Christmas vacation, experts at the Ukrainian National Flu and ARVI Center warn that the flu and ARVI epidemic process may intensify. Therefore, they are advising people to take special care of their health during this period.
Low flu infection rates have also been observed outside of Ukraine. Epidemiologists claim that there were no ARVI epidemics in the last week of 2007 in most European countries. This season, experts have identified as many as 995 flu virus strains, 81 per cent of which are type A; 117 strains belong to subtype A (e.g., Solomon Islands); and 10 per cent belong to type B (e.g., Malaysia).
