A year ago, global alarm over the emergence of an impulsive new damage of H1N1 pandemic flu was in full swing. Headlines blared that thousands were becoming sick; face masks and hand sanitizers were selling out as soon as they hit store shelves. Weird, where is H1N1 this spring?

Dr. Margaret Chan, head of the World Health Organization, said that the virus is still considered pandemic, meaning widespread, though case numbers have ebbed significantly.

In the meantime in the United States, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that, as of May 22, just 1 percent of outpatient visits concerned flu.

The new H1N1 flu — occasionally called swine flu — long ago pushed away prior seasonal flu viruses to turn out to be the leading strain. And specialists consider it will settle into the standard fall/winter epidemic sample that people are used to.

This kind of foremost viral shift occurs every few decades with influenza, experts noted.So H1N1 pandemic flu will — like previous main flu strains — almost certainly mount a resurgence this fall and wane again in the spring of next year. That’s the polar opposite of how it first appeared on the scene in the spring of 2009.

Another specialist approved that H1N1 flu may seem to be gone right now, but should not be forgotten.

According to the World Health Organization, H1N1 flu is at this time mainly active in areas of the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, though cases stay behind comparatively low, Agence France-Presse reported. WHO based its announcement Thursday on a report from a 15-member panel of experts. That committee will meet again in July when more data arrives on the development of flu during the southern hemisphere’s winter season.Pregnant women, particularly, were endangered from the H1N1 strain. In a research published in April in the Journal of the American Medical Association, CDC experts found that while pregnant women make up about 1 percent of the U.S. population at any given time, during the 2009 H1N1 swine flu outbreak they made up 5 percent of deaths.

In the intervening time, the 2010/2011 flu vaccine will definitely include the H1N1 strain, along with two other strains. Therefore vaccination against H1N1 is still significant, in particular for pregnant women, the young and those weakened by other ailments.