UK child H1N1 flu rate much higher than expected

One child in three caught the pandemic H1N1 flu in the first wave of infection in hard-hit areas of England in 2009 - up to 10 times more than originally thought, scientists said on Thursday. Blood samples suggest children are central to flu's spread and should be a key target group for vaccination, experts from Britain's Health Protection Agency (HPA) wrote in the study in The Lancet medical journal. Britain was one of the first European countries hit by H1N1, also known as swine flu, which emerged in March and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in June. Drug companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis, Baxter, CSL and AstraZeneca among others, have since developed H1N1 vaccines and many governments ordered millions of doses for vaccine campaigns to slow the virus' spread. According to the WHO, almost 14,000 official H1N1 flu deaths have been reported by more than 200 countries, but it will take at least 1-2 years after the pandemic ends to establish the true toll and the actual death rate could be much higher. The pandemic now appears to be waning, the WHO says, but a third wave of infections could yet strike.