Even though it appears as if Mexico has passed the worst, or so they say, there are still serious concerns about the dangers posed by the global Swine flu outbreak. WHO is suggesting they will raise the alert level to 6, which is tantamount to declaring the swine flu a pandemic.
Dr. Anne Schuchat, the interim Deputy Director for Science and Public Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a news conference that the virus was “circulating all over” the United States.
“The virus has arrived, I would say, in most of the country now,” she added.
Around the world, 19 countries have now been affected, including Colombia, which earlier in the day reported the first confirmed case of swine flu in South America. About 800 people have been infected, predominantly in North America. Spain has 44 confirmed cases, more than any other European country, with Britain, Italy and Germany reporting new cases.
“These viruses mutate, these viruses change, these viruses can further reassort with other genetic material, with other viruses,” said Dr. Michael Ryan, W.H.O.’s global alert and response director. “So it would be imprudent at this point to take too much reassurance.”
Health professionals were studying a new development in Canada, where a swine herd on a family-run farm in Alberta Province apparently contracted the virus from a worker who had visited Mexico. The man-to-pig transmission appeared to be a first for this strain. Both the man and the swine have recovered; the herd remains quarantined. Mexican foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa:
“Mexican citizens showing no signs at all of being ill have been isolated under unacceptable conditions. These are discriminatory measures, without foundation.”
The World Health Organization's chief laid the groundwork Sunday for her agency potentially to declare a new strain of A/H1N1 swine flu a pandemic, saying such a move doesn't necessarily mean the disease is highly lethal or that it will sweep the entire globe.
"There is a lot of misunderstanding in terms of fear and death," Margaret Chan, the United Nations public health agency's director-general, said in an interview. "It doesn't mean death in big numbers is going to happen."
A week and a half after learning that a new strain of swine flu was causing outbreaks in Mexico and infections in the U.S., the WHO chief is now faced with the distinct possibility that she will have to formally declare the disease a pandemic, once it begins spreading in a sustained way in other parts of the world beyond the Americas. WHO protocols will compel that to happen, she said, even though thus far the strain isn't producing the deadly sort of scourge most people associate with the word "pandemic" and in fact looks to have exacted a lighter death toll in Mexico than authorities there originally believed.
As the disease has spread quickly over the past 11 days, the agency has raised its global pandemic alert level twice, to phase 5 -- signaling outbreaks in more than one country in one of the agency's geographical regions -- from phase 3. Its highest level is a phase 6, meaning community outbreaks are occurring in at least three countries in at least two of the WHO's regions. The disease is spreading within communities in the U.S. and Mexico, and case counts are mounting in Canada. Public health officials have said sustained transmission hasn't been seen elsewhere yet, but is likely to emerge in countries that already have multiple case counts.
