Swine flu appears to be quite mild outside Mexico

The strain of swine flu outside Mexico would be appear to be mild and gives "some cause for hope", the chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan said this afternoon.

To date there has been only one confirmed Irish case and there are no other confirmed or suspected cases in Ireland, he said at a daily press briefing to update the situation in relation to swine flu in Ireland.

The man, who is reported to be in his twenties and from south Dublin, is recovering well but will remain at home for seven days. He contracted the H1N1 strain of the virus while visiting Mexico. Confirmation that he was the first Irish victim of the disease came yesterday evening.

Mexico has to date confirmed 19 fatalities from the virus with 101 others suspected of having died from the disease. However, the health minister Jose Angel Cordova said the incidences of the disease and mortality from the H1N1 flu virus is dropping on a daily basis.

To date, only one person outside Mexico has died of the disease and that was a Mexican child who died in the United States.

Dr Holohan said the relative mildness of the swine flu variation outside Mexico was encouraging, but he urged caution because those who had contracted the disease outside that country were invariably younger and better able to cope with it.

He also said there remained a possibility that the swine flu outbreak would become a pandemic as incidences had been reported in three European countries - the UK, Germany and Spain - of three people who had contracted the H1N1 strain of flu without visiting Mexico.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is continuing to treat the swine flu outbreak as a phase five alert which is characterized by human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region.

However, its director of global alert Michael Ryan said earlier today that a phase 6 alert, which would indicate a full-scale pandemic is "imminent" because of the spread of the disease worldwide even if the symptoms are generally mild.

Dr Holohan said: "That is not something that we are necessarily predicting, but in terms of a briefing from the WHO, it is clearly something that they are advising us to be prepared for and our preparedness is very much focused on that."

The HSE's national director of population health Dr Pat Doorley said its national crisis management teams were meeting on a daily basis on the national and regional level to enhance their preparedness.

He said the HSE was building up stocks of anti-viral medication as well as masks, gloves and gowns.

"As the situation evolves, we will be taking advice from the expert group which advises the Department of Health for what supplies we need," he said.