Swine flu could infect as much as half of the US population this fall and winter and cause up to 90,000 deaths, President Barack Obama’s science advisers warned Monday.
Laying out a “plausible scenario” for the epidemic’s impact in the United States, the report painted a grim picture of stress on the US health care system as it struggles to cope with a flood of flu patients.
The epidemic’s resurgence could “produce infection of 30-50 percent of the US population this fall and winter, with symptoms in approximately 20-40 percent of the population (60-120 million people), more than half of whom would seek medical attention,” the report said.
As many as 1.8 million people could be admitted to hospitals with up to 300,000 of them requiring treatment in intensive care units.
