Swine flu has sickened about 50 million Americans, and killed about 10,000, according to new estimates released by federal health officials on Thursday.

That means about 1 in 6 Americans have had the illness, said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Most of ugg bailey button the increase is due to cases that occurred after early October, when the nation saw the peak of a second wave of illness, CDC officials said.

The CDC also estimates that nearly 200,000 people were hospitalized through mid-November — about the same amount that occurs normally in an entire winter flu season.

While the elderly account for most of the hospitalizations and deaths from seasonal flu, the largest proportion of reported swine flu hospitalizations and deaths are in non-elderly adults, CDC officials said.

More than three-quarters of the deaths were people ages 18 to 64, according to the CDC.

The new estimates seems to echo an unpublished, in-depth CDC analysis of 100 U.S. swine flu deaths. About 80 percent of those deaths were in people ages 20 through 59, and 45 percent were obese, that research found.

Flu ugg boots sale estimates are tricky and inexact because many illnesses are relatively mild and go unreported, and hospitalizations and deaths often involve maladies beyond the flu. The CDC actually thinks that between 34 million and 67 million Americans have gotten sick from swine flu, but Frieden gave 50 million as a midpoint estimate.

But there are still plenty of ill people — as many as during the worst days of many regular flu seasons. And CDC officials have said the signs of declining cases do not necessarily mean the worst is over.

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