Clinicians from around the world are reporting a very severe form of the Swine Flu and they’re finding it in younger, otherwise healthy people, says the World Health Organization.

Infectious disease specialists say that in these patients the virus directly infects the lung, causing severe respiratory failure.

Survival for these patients depend on highly specialized and demanding care in intensive care units, usually with long and costly stays, the WHO flu experts said yesterday.

This comes at the end of a week when the international health group predicted that half of us will be infected with H1N1 this season.

Several U.S. colleges are already reporting outbreaks of the flu in students returning for the Fall session.

On the other side of the globe, health researchers who surveyed 2,255 healthcare workers in Hong Kong hospitals reported that the majority of them say they won’t take the protective shots.

In Friday’s briefing, the WHO emphasized what it called “important differences” between patterns of illness reported during the pandemic and those seen during seasonal epidemics of influenza.

One of the main differences is that those affected by the pandemic are generally youngerMost severe cases and deaths have occurred in adults under the age of 50 years, with deaths in the elderly comparatively rare. With the traditional seasonal influenza, about 90 percent of severe and fatal cases occur in people 65 years of age or older.

So get in line early when the vaccine becomes available.  October is now the best guess.

If you want more details, here is a link to the WHO.