Letter to the Editor Local Health Department Influenza Surveillance Estimates and Projections of Peak Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Occupancy During the

influenza A (H1N1) pandemic, the estimated clinical attack rate among children <18 years in the United States was 26%, the highest of any age group [1]. The availability of in-tensive care unit beds is a critical determinant of surge response [2, 3]. Recent studies have estimated the impact of an influenza pandemic upon demand for pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) beds [4–6]; however, few studies have compared observed PICU occupancy rates with modeled projections built from local health department surveillance estimates. We estimated the demand for PICU beds using local health department surveillance data from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. We conducted this analysis to determine how changes in key parameters, such as the hospitali-zation rate and PICU admission rate, influence PICU occupancy. We identified children <18 years with laboratory-confirmed influenza in-fection who required intensive care at Primary Children’s Medical Center (PCMC). PCMC is a 289-bed child-ren’s hospital that serves as the commu-nity hospital for northern Utah, as well as a referral center for Utah, Idaho