The Flu Report
Victorian Influenza Surveillance 2009

Report No: 8	Week Ending: June 21, 2009

Summary

• Influenza-like illness (ILI) activity was higher than reported for the previous period, with a presentation rate of 21.9 cases per 1000 patients seen.
• From the swabs received from surveillance GPs to date 138 have been positive for influenza A. Sixty of these have been confirmed as H1N1 human swine influenza, three as H3 and two as H1 (non-swine derived).
• The total number of laboratory confirmed notifications to the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) to date was 5924, of which 2064 (32%) were from Victoria.
• Victoria’s rate of laboratory confirmed notifications to NNDSS per 100,000 population increased this week to 27.7.

General Practice Surveillance for influenza-like illness (ILI),
from metropolitan & regional sentinel sites, 2009

Influenza like illness 1997 - 2009

Laboratory detection of respiratory viruses
from GP sentinel surveillance

Laboratory detection of respiratory viruses from
all respiratory PCR samples tested at VIDRL

National perspective

There were 3746 laboratory confirmed notifications of influenza in Australia to the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System In June so far compared with 277 in 2008. To date there have been 5924 notifications in total; 2064 (35%) of these were from Victoria. The rate of laboratory confirmed notifications per 100,000 population in Victoria is 39.0, compared to a national rate of 27.7.

See the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing Influenza report at :

http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/cda-surveil-ozflu-flucurr.htm

or

http://www9.health.gov.au/cda/Source/CDA-index.cfm for more information

The WHO Influenza Collaborating Centre analyses influenza isolates supplied by laboratories in the region. For more information see:

http://www.influenzacentre.org/index.html

The Southern Hemisphere 2009 influenza vaccine contains the following strains: A/Brisbane/59/2007 (H1N1); A/Brisbane/10/2007 (H3N2); B/Florida/4/2006

Influenza A H1N1 (Swine Flu)

Information on the World Health Organizations global response to cases of influenza A/H1N1, including daily situation reports can be found at:

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/en/index.html

Information from the Commonwealth can be found at :

http://www.healthemergency.gov.au/internet/healthemergency/publishing.nsf/Content/home-1

Information from the Department of Human Services, Victoria can be found at:

http://www.health.vic.gov.au/ideas/diseases/swine-influenza

Google Flu Trends

On the 4th June 2009 Google released its Flu Trends website for Australia.
The Flu Trends application aims to estimate how many people have influenza like illness through tallying daily influenza associated Google searches. For the Australian Flu Trends, Google worked with historical seasonal GP sentinel surveillance data from the Victorian Infectious Disease Reference Laboratory (VIDRL).
The website can be found at http://www.google.org/flutrends/intl/en_au/

For further information visit www.influenzacentre.org

All figures and data accurate at time of publication, but subject to change

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