Swine flu ‘still a young person's disease,' CDC official says

ATLANTA -- Swine flu continues to be most dangerous to children and younger adults and is largely bypassing older people, according to government health data released Tuesday.

Health officials released figures for swine flu hospitalizations and deaths for the seven weeks since the beginning of last month. The information is from 28 states.

The data show that more than half of all hospitalizations occurred among people 24 and younger; more than a quarter of those hospitalized were 5 to 18. A third of all deaths occurred among people ages 25 to 49; another third of those who died were 50 to 64.

"Essentially, this is still a young person's disease," said Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Twelve percent of the deaths occurred among the elderly, compared with the roughly 90 percent of deaths among the elderly from the seasonal flu, Schuchat said at a news conference Tuesday.

"It's almost completely reversed," said Schuchat, who heads the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

Many people 55 and older have some degree of immunity to the swine flu virus, perhaps from exposure decades ago to a similar virus or vaccine.

The latest figures show about 5,000 hospitalizations in 27 states for lab-confirmed swine flu and about 300 deaths in 28 states in the past seven weeks.