A foreign research team says the mortality rate of H1N1 influenza is five times that of the normal flu.

Japanese media quoted study results by a team at Utrecht University in the Netherlands as saying that the disease has a mortality rate of 0.5 percent. The team conducted the study on flu patients in the United States and Canada.

The mortality rate came to one-point-two percent for American patients and 0.2 percent for Canadian patients. The 0.5 percent average is similar to the mortality rate in Mexico, where the virus first broke out.

The rate for regular seasonal flu is below 0.1 percent.

The most devastating influenza on record was the Spanish flu of 1918 and 1919, with a two-percent mortality rate.