It was last April that swine flu cases first started appearing.
“It’s been one heck of a year.” California Department of Public
Health Director Dr. Mark Horton says the state’s been through
two waves of the illness. About nine-thousand Californians have
been hospitalized with H1N1 and nearly 600 have died from the
virus. Horton says though the pandemic has receded for now, H1N1
is still out there: "When we’ve looked back historically what
has happened with similar pandemics in the past there have been
in many cases third and fourth waves.” Horton says if that does
happen, the state still has a network of doctors set up to alert
health officials: “The surveillance mechanisms are still in
place to allow us to at the earliest possible sign to detect any
re-increase of influenza activity in the community and we’ll be
ramping that up again as we move closer to the fall.” Horton
says the state is better prepared if there is another wave.
That’s because up to 12 million Californians have been
vaccinated against swin