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H1N1 Influenza 09
Australian Government Response
Pages last updated
30 September, 2009
New Pandemic Phase Protect
17 June 2009, the Federal Minister for Health and Ageing, Nicola Roxon, after consultation with State and Territory governments, announced that Australia has developed a new response phase to manage the outbreak of H1N1 Influenza 09 (Human Swine Influenza) called PROTECT.
On the advice of the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Jim Bishop, and the Australian Health Protection Committee, a new pandemic phase has been created to guide the ongoing Australian response to the disease.
The new phase recognises that the infection with H1N1 Influenza 09 is not as severe as originally envisaged when the Australian Health Management Plan for Pandemic Influenza (AHMPPI) was written in 2008 and that this new disease is mild in most cases, severe in some and moderate overall.
PROTECT sits alongside CONTAIN and SUSTAIN phases with a greater focus on treating and caring for people in whom the disease may be severe.
PROTECT is a measured, reasonable and proportionate health response to the risk that the infection poses to the Australian community. It is consistent with the message from the WHO when it lifted its Pandemic Alert to 6, that countries will need to adjust their responses to accommodate the knowledge we now have that this disease is moderate in most cases.
Key elements of the new Phase of PROTECT are:
- Identification and early treatment of those with moderate or severe disease especially in people with respiratory difficulty.
- A focus on early treatment of people who may be vulnerable to severe outcomes. These people include pregnant women and those with respiratory disease (asthma, COAD), heart disease, diabetes, renal disease, morbid obesity, and immunosuppression.
- Control of outbreaks in institutional settings, such as special schools.
- Widespread school closures or school exclusion for students who have travelled to areas of high prevalence are no longer appropriate and will not be continued on a national basis.
- Voluntary home isolation for those with mild disease with supportive treatment only, such as over the counter medication.
- Antivirals from the national or state medical stockpiles will be provided to those people with moderate or severe disease or whose underlying conditions, after appropriate clinical assessment, could make them vulnerable to severe infection. It is not appropriate to provide antivirals to their otherwise healthy household contacts, nor will those contacts be placed into quarantine.
- Testing would focus on to identification of H1N1 Influenza 09 in people with moderate or severe illness, people more vulnerable to severe illness, those in institutional settings and Indigenous Australians.
- Increased identification and monitoring of H1N1 hospital admissions, ICU admissions and levels of morbidity and monitoring of clinical outcomes throughout the influenza season.
- Increased sentinel testing to identify levels of community transmission and the strain of circulating influenza viruses.
- Ongoing monitoring of the virus for the emergence of antiviral resistance, genomic drift or reassortment that could herald a change to greater virulence.
- Additional border measures such as thermal screening and Health Declaration Cards will cease.
Under the PROTECT response, pathology testing of all potential cases will not be required or desirable. This is because most cases are mild and do not require treatment and confirmation is no longer required to inform clinical decisions about quarantine or use of antivirals.
Vulnerable people would be diagnosed and treated according to clinical judgement.
Jurisdictions will be making arrangements progressively over the next few days to move to this new level and we anticipate that all states will be at this level by next Friday 26 June.
22 May 2009 - The Chief Medical Officer raises the Australian pandemic alert level to CONTAIN.
30 April 2009 - The Australian government implemented full border measures to help delay the introduction of Human Swine Influenza into Australia.
- Pilots on all incoming international passenger flights are required to report to the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service (AQIS) on the health status of their passengers. This report is called a pratique, and all pilots must give a pratique to the airport on landing.
- The new measures at Australian airports include the use of Thermal Scanners and a mandatory requirement for all incoming passengers to fill out Health Declaration Cards.
28 April 2009 - The Australian Government has included H1N1 09 to be a quarantinable disease in humans under the Quarantine Act 1908.
28 April 2009 - The Commonwealth Government upgrades the Australian Pandemic Phase in relation to H1N1 09 from the ALERT Phase to DELAY Phase.
April 2009 - Official reports by the World Health Organization, the US Centre for Communicable Disease Control and Canadian health authorities of outbreaks of a new strain of swine influenza in the USA, Mexico, Canada and Europe are generating significant media attention. There is concern that this new strain of swine influenza may have pandemic potential.
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