NEW YORK, New York — Startling reports out of New York City indicate a tragic increase in H1N1 related fatalities. Wednesday evening, a press conference held by the CDC indicated that the total of H1N1 related deaths in the northeastern United States has climed from 174 in December to 239 as of February. These deaths include the mysterious reactions to H1N1 innoculations that some people with the Suresh Linkage Complex have allegedly suffered from.
A recent report from the CDC issued to all public news outlets this morning indicates that the center has discovered a potentially significant mutation in the H1N1 influenza strain that could be responsible for causing the severest symptoms among those infected.
"The mutation could be affecting the virus' ability to go deeper into the respiratory system, thus causing more serious illness," the representative of the CDC said in the statement.
The World Health Organisation said that the mutation did not appear to be widespread in the United States and the virus in its mutated form remained sensitive to antivirals and pandemic vaccines. A similar mutation had been detected in H1N1 viruses circulating in several other countries, including China and Norway, though in not nearly as strong a severity.
"Based on what we know so far, it doesn't seem like the mutated virus is circulating in the population, but rather that spontaneous changes have happened in the three patients we've confirmed the changes in," director Gerald Larson stated in an earlier press conference.
Dr. Anne Schuchat of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, "This mutation, while small, could pose a larger threat to the population of the northeastern United States if it continues to mutate." Unconfirmed reports from sources within the CDC have cited that the three individuals presenting the mutated strain of the virus were all SLC-positive individuals. "I think it is just too soon to say what this might mean long term," Schuchat told reporters in a telephone briefing.
Further exacerbating this news break was a leak from within the CDC delivered to several news organizations within New York City, citing that the CDC has been downplaying the severity of the symptoms of those three Evolved. These sources stated that doctors were horrified to discover during autopsies of the three whom had died of the mutated virus that the victim's lungs were "black as charcoal", and that the lungs looked as if they had been "burned" and, that some doctors have likened the symptoms to the deadly 1918 Pandemic, or Spanish Flu, which caused an estimated 50-100 million deaths worldwide.
The CDC fired back in the afternoon stating that the alleged leak did not come from inside the CDC and that they have been working to determine the source of this "misinformation" and that local news outlets were "deplorably irresponsible" in spreading information that could lead to a potential panic.
The sources whom originally supplied the leak have been unavailable for comment.