Agency Urges Caution on Estimates of Swine Flu

ATLANTA — Up to 90,000 deaths from swine flu in the United States, mostly among children and young people?

Up to 1.8 million people hospitalized, with 50 percent to 100 percent of the intensive-care beds in some cities filled with swine flu patients?

Up to half the population infected by this winter?

On Monday, a White House advisory panel issued a report with these estimates, calling them “a plausible scenario” for a second wave of infections by the new H1N1 flu. The grim numbers by the panel, the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, got considerable play in the news media.

On Tuesday, however, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agency with the most expertise on influenza pandemics, suggested that the projections should be regarded with caution.