President Obama has declared swine flu a national emergency.
"In recognition of the continuing progression of the pandemic,” Obama wrote in his official proclamation, announced Saturday, “and in further preparation as a nation, we are taking additional steps to facilitate our response.”
But what can you do?
First and foremost, educate yourself with the latest information on the swine flu, or H1N1 virus.
The Daily News linked up with Yahoo! to analyze the tens of millions of swine flu-related searches on their U.S. website over the past month -- and found the ten key questions Americans are asking about the virus.
Dr. Richard Besser, former head of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and senior health and medical editor at ABC News, provides the answers.
1. What is swine flu?
Swine flu is the name for the new strain of influenza virus that is circulating around the globe. It first appeared in April of 2009 in the U.S. and Mexico, and has quickly spread to all parts of the world.
2. What are the symptoms of swine flu?
The symptoms of swine flu are exactly the same as the symptoms of seasonal flu, which include fever, coughing, sore throat, runny nose, body aches, and fatigue.
There is nothing about swine flu that tells you it is swine flu and not seasonal flu, so you really have to look to public health and say, “Hey, what’s going on in my community?” This summer, if you had flu symptoms, it is likely that you had swine flu because that was all that was circulating.
3. How many people have died from swine flu?
It’s hard to say exactly how many people have died from swine flu. From April through the end of August, the CDC reported 9,079 swine flu hospitalizations and 593 deaths in the United States. From August 30th through October 10th, there were 292 reported swine flu deaths, and another 2,029 deaths that were reported either as influenza or pneumonia - some of those probably weren’t swine flu.
According to the World Health Organization, as of October 17th, there have been more than 414,000 laboratory confirmed cases of pandemic influenza H1N1 2009 and nearly 5,000 deaths. Most likely, there have been millions of cases around the world that have gone undiagnosed and unreported.
4. How long does swine flu last?
In general, you feel pretty lousy for three days, and you start to improve over the next few days though you may have a cough which lingers for weeks. If you don’t start to feel better after three or four days, you should see a doctor. Another important thing to note is that if you are starting to get better and then take a turn for the worse - meaning you get a high fever - then you need to seek medical care right away because that could mean you have a bacterial infection on top of the flu.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/10/26/2009-10-26_swine_flu.html#ixzz0V2z47ZOn