The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has come out with new numbers on the h1n1 virus.  They put the number of H1N1 deaths at three times the amount of previous estimates.

"For April through October 17, we estimate that 22 million people have become ill from pandemic influenza.  We estimate 98,000 people have been hospitalized so far through October 17," explains Rear Admiral Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC's National Center For Immunization And Respiratory Diseases.  "We estimate 98,000 people have been hospitalized so far through October 17.  We estimate that 3,900 people have died so far from the first 6 months of the pandemic from this virus."

Schuchat heads up the CDC's vaccination and respiratory illness department.  She says the change in totals reflect the difficulty in counting cases, not that the virus is getting worse. "In children under 18, we estimate 8 million have been ill with influenza, 36000 hospitalized, and 540 children have died from this pandemic influenza.  In the first 6 months of the pandemic for adults 18 to 64 years of age, we estimate 12 million cases, 53000 hospital, 2900 deaths.  For people 65 and over, we estimate 2 million cases, 9000 hospitalizations, and about 440 deaths."
The estimates I'm giving you are the first 6 months and this is April through the middle of October.  We have a long flu season ahead of us.  In typical seasonal flu, we see disease from December to may.  It's only November.  So exactly what we'll see as the full toll of illness from this pandemic is very difficult to say.  I can so though what we're seeing from this H1N1 virus is no where near the 1918 pandemic.  It caused much larger numbers even 6 months in."

The CDC also says H1N1 vaccine supplies are steadily increasing, but they're still not at the levels they'd like.
"Today we have 41.6 million doses of the vaccine that are available for the states to order," Schuchat says.  "We believe that will be somewhat less to what the manufacturers have expected to have reached by this point and it's just very difficult to predict vaccine production for influenza. 41.6 million is more than we had before, but it's not as much as we hoped to have for today.  Again, it's an imperfect process - both producing vaccine and projecting how many doses you'll have at any one point."

The CDC also reminds you it is American Diabetes Awareness Month. Diabetes is an underlying medical condition and anyone who has it is considered part of the high risk H1N1 group.

Twelve percent of all hospitalizations are among diabetics and one in four of them end up on the ICU.
The CDC says there's also a good amount of seasonal flu vaccine available.
92 million doses are available to states to order.