Authors: Staffan P.E. Sylvan, Bodil Ardung, Johan Hedlund.
Background: The aim of this study was to compare the impact of the pandemic influenza strain A(H1N1)pdm09 on the need for hospital care, intensive care and mortality in three countries in the southern hemisphere where no vaccination was implemented with the results obtained in Uppsala county, Sweden, where vaccination with the pandemic vaccine Pandemrix was started two weeks before the begining of the outbreak.
Methods: In Sweden pandemic influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 was notifiable from the microbiology departments. Notification from the clinicians was required for patients treated in the hospitals. Data on mortality was extracted from the patients electronic journal systems. The data from the three southern hemisphere countries was obtained from a data analysis made by the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control and was distributed on August 17th 2009 to all hospitals and county medical officers in Sweden.
Results: The 2009 A(H1N1) influenza pandemic resulted in a lower need for hospital care in two out of three countries from the southern hemisphere compared with Uppsala county. In contrast, the need for intensive care and the mortality rate in the three countries where no vaccination was performed was similar to those of Uppsala county, where 62% of the population had been vaccinated by January 2010.
Conclusions: No clear benefit could be registered on the need for hospital care, intensive care and mortality of the massvaccination campaign implemented in Uppsala county. This is probably due to the late onset of the vaccination campaign. After the vaccination campaign 7 new cases of narcolepsy was diagnosed in Uppsala county.
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