SWINE FLU OUTBREAK:THE WORLD Health Organisation's emergency committee last night raised the pandemic threat level for swine flu to 4 after the death toll at its epicentre in Mexico surged to nearly 150, the number of cases in the US doubled and the first infections were confirmed in Scotland.
Raising the pandemic level to phase four recognises that there is now sustained transmission of the infection from human to human.
WHO acting assistant director-general Keiji Fukuda urged countries to strengthen their preparations for swine flu but said closing borders and imposing travel restrictions would do no good at this point. He said mitigation rather than containment was the best way to fight the infection.
“A pandemic is not considered inevitable at this time,” he added. “The situation is fluid and the situation continues to evolve.”
Experts needed more data to determine whether the outbreak was sustained human-to-human transmission and that production of seasonal flu vaccines should continue. “WHO should also monitor the situation very carefully and should facilitate the process to develop a vaccine against this new swine H1N1 virus,” added Dr Fukuda.
The first confirmed case in Europe came earlier in the day in Spain, where a man tested positive and 17 other cases are suspected.
Later in the afternoon two Scottish people were confirmed with the virus. Scottish health secretary Nicola Sturgeon said the patients, at Monklands hospital in Airdrie, Lanarkshire, were recovering well. She said a further seven people who had been in contact were being monitored for suspected swine flu symptoms.
In an indication of the seriousness with which the threat is being taken in the UK, if the situation deteriorates the health secretary, Alan Johnson, is considering warning the entire population to set up a support network of friends and relatives so they can be quickly quarantined at home if they are thought to have swine flu symptoms. The friends would then collect medicine on their behalf.
Mexico’s health secretary, José Ángel Córdova, said the number of deaths at the heart of the crisis had risen to 149 and that he expected more to die. Almost 2,000 have been treated in hospital for suspected infection, he added. Half of them have been released.
Mr Córdova admitted that the health authorities lacked the staff to check on all those suspected cases. Some foreign health officials fear such difficulties in coping with the crisis may be contributing to the disease’s spread.
In New York, the number of confirmed cases among students at a school rose to 28, with more than 100 suspected, but officials said there was no evidence swine flu had spread elsewhere in the city. That brought the number of confirmed cases in the US to 40 in five states, twice as many as reported at the weekend.
Peru and Guatemala reported the first suspected infections in other parts of Latin America, where health officials fear swine flu has already spread but so far gone undetected because of the poorer health infrastructure.
The European Union’s health commissioner, Androulla Vassiliou, caused a political stir by urging Europeans to avoid non-essential travel to Mexico and the US but backtracked slightly after criticism from the Americans and WHO.
Richard Besser, acting head of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said such advice was not “warranted”.
But that was too late to stop travel agencies and tour operators cancelling flights to Mexico and the share prices of airline companies being hit because of the pandemic fears.
Health officials are still uncertain as to the extent of the spread of the virus, and how far it is likely to go. In the US, the health department was readying supplies of anti-flu drugs from its strategic stockpile to treat millions of people if necessary, but for now it is urging Americans to take precautionary measures, such as regularly washing their hands, which it said is one of the most effective ways of staving off infection.
In Israel, where there is one suspected case, the deputy health minister, Yakov Litzman, said the disease will not be known as swine flu because religious Jews do not eat pork. “We will call it Mexico flu. We won’t call it swine flu,” he said.
Russia and China have barred pork imports from the US and Mexico, even though the WHO says there is no danger of infection from contact with meat.
– ( Guardianservice, Reuters)