Miscellaneous

Influenza A(H1N1) -- Current Global Situation

2009, May 30 - 8:19am — vyvy

Last Updated: 11-Aug-2010 (Graphs: 13-Aug-2010 06:31 UTC)

Update: The H1N1 pandemic is officially over. Hopefully it's really over and I don't need to update this post again!

The threat of Influenza A(H1N1) is not over yet. I have created the charts below to illustrate the current situation, and will update them regularly with my scripts (That's why I put this post under 'Programming' too, and see below if interested).

Other important updates:

25-Apr-2009: WHO declared Phase 3 for pandemic alert level [who.int]
27-Apr-2009: WHO raised pandemic alert level to Phase 4 [who.int]
29-Apr-2009: WHO raised pandemic alert level to Phase 5 [who.int]
11-Jun-2009: WHO raised pandemic alert level to Phase 6 [who.int]
16-Jul-2009: WHO would no longer issue the global tables showing the numbers of confirmed cases for all countries [who.int]
04-Dec-2009: WHO no longer issued the number of reported confirmed cases [who.int]
10-Aug-2010: H1N1 in Post-Pandemic Period [who.int]

** The number of death cases

** The number of confirmed cases (Up to 22-Nov-09 only)

** The mortality rate (Up to 22-Nov-09 only) (Note: The figures are obtained simply by dividing the number of death cases by the number of confirmed cases. Since confirmed cases need not be reported after July-2009, the mortality rate after that does not really reflect the actual situation.)

Source: WHO updates on Influenza A(H1N1) [www.who.int]

I use Gnuplot [gnuplot.info] to generate the charts with the help of a script and a data file. I used to use a python script to automate the entire update process: Fetches the latest updates from WHO website, parses the page, generates the latest data file, generates the charts, and finally uploads the charts. However, since the format became less well-formatted starting from update 60, I have since abandoned the script and update the data manually.