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But the WHO won't be proclaiming the end of the H1N1 pandemic entirely. Instead, a panel of experts meeting today will determine whether the global community has moved into "a post-peak period," where rates of illness start returning to more typical influenza levels.
And the panel warns that this final stage could endure for months. The WHO is scheduled to announce the panel's decision Wednesday.
"There is no on and off switch for a pandemic, and it's not a single event," WHO spokesman Gregory Harti said at a news conference. "What we have to see is that the behavior of the H1N1 virus becomes like the behavior of other seasonal viruses."
As of now, the virus is still causing outbreaks in atypical flu seasons and affecting groups not usually at increased risk of seasonal influenza, like kids and teens. Seasonal influenza is us
Reed Saxon, AP
A man gets vaccinated against swine flu on Feb. 17 in Riverside, Calif. The virus is still showing up in groups that are usually at low risk for seasonal flu, such as teenagers.
The WHO first announced that swine flu had reached pandemic status in June, when it raised the alert level on the illness to the maximum level of six on its warning scale.
Right now, the estimated global death toll is 16,000, with millions having been infected since the initial outbreak. In the United States, a study out of Pittsburgh extrapolated blood samples from 846 residents to estimate that 63 million Americans fell ill with the flu strain. More than 70 million have been vaccinated.
Even if the WHO panel determines that the virus has peaked, warnings will likely persist. Transmission rates can come in waves, and many experts are wary that we could experience more peaks and crests before the strain is finally contained.
"We are not at all out of the woods because the virus continues to circulate, but the chances of a very large additional wave are very hard to predict," Anne M. Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told The Washington Post.
The latest update from the CDC is, however, a promising one: Its data shows that swine flu activity is "relatively low" and isn't spreading out of control anywhere in the country.
But as H1N1 begins to wane in the public consciousness, new warnings of a hybrid combination between avian flu (H5N1) and regular human influenza are beginning to circulate. A study in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences determined that the combination has the potential to create "highly pathogenic viruses" easily transmitted between humans.
