Swine Flu Cases Has Experts Scrambling
April 24, 2009 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
Concurrent outbreaks of human cases of swine flu in the southwestern United States and a mystery respiratory illness in Mexico had health authorities across the continent struggling Thursday to figure out what is unfolding.
Laboratories in Atlanta and Winnipeg are looking at clinical specimens trying to determine if the mounting number of human cases of swine flu – seven and counting – in California and Texas, and an unusual explosion of severe respiratory illnesses in Mexico are pieces of the same puzzle or confusing coincidences.
Even on its own the human infections with swine flu viruses are significant enough to have experts wondering whether the world is watching the start of a flu pandemic.
UPDATE: Mexico shuts schools over deadly influenza epidemic
Mexico authorities have closed all schools in the capital and central Mexico as the WHO announced hundreds of human cases of swine flu in the country, including 57 suspected deaths.
The outbreak has killed at least 20 people in the past month, Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said in announcing the school closures.
“This afternoon the epidemic was confirmed by Canadian and US labs to be a new influenza virus,” Mr Cordova said in a televised statement in which he urged people to avoid large crowds, shaking hands, kissing people as a greeting, or using the subway.
The Government has gathered 600,000 vacines to help protect health care workers dealing with the outbreaks, the health minister said.
The World Health Organisation said there are 800 suspected swine flu cases in Mexico and seven cases reported in the southwestern United States.
It was not immediately clear whether Mexican authorities had identified the outbreak as that of swine flu, as labeled by the WHO.
But official pronouncements are being crafted with caution by authorities, who remember all too well the 1976 swine flu scare – a feared pandemic that didn’t materialize.
Travel advisory warns of severe respiratory illness in Mexico
Canadians who have recently returned from Mexico should be on alert for flu-like symptoms that could be connected to a severe respiratory illness, federal health officials said Thursday in issuing a travel advisory.
A severe respiratory illness appears to have infected 137 people in south and central areas of Mexico, with cases concentrated in Mexico City and three other areas, including 20 deaths, the Public Health Agency of Canada said.
In the United States, health officials in Texas and California were scrambling this week to deal with a new strain of swine flu, which has been diagnosed in seven people.
The states share a border with Mexico not far from a town where two deaths were reported.
The U.S. cases are unusual, because it appears none of the patients had contact with pigs, and the virus is one that health officials have never seen before.
No cases of this swine flu have yet been found in Canada. The country’s national laboratory in Winnipeg is analyzing 51 samples from Mexico to determine if any of them are swine flu and are linked to the U.S. cases. Results are expected in two days.
Swine Flu Probe Widens as Mexico Finds Lung Illness
An urgent probe into an unusual flu outbreak that’s infected seven people in the U.S. was widened after Mexico sought assistance to investigate more than 130 cases of severe respiratory disease that may be related.
Authorities in Mexico asked the Public Health Agency of Canada to help identify the cause of the lung illness linked to 20 deaths, including two in the state of Baja California Norte, which borders California. The Mexican cases include five health- care workers, the Ottawa-based agency said in an e-mail today.
Tests in Mexico found patients were infected with H1N1 and type-B influenza strains and the parainfluenza virus, the agency said. In the U.S., doctors discovered a new strain of H1N1 swine influenza in patients in San Diego County and Imperial County, California, and in San Antonio, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said today.
“It will be critical to determine whether or not the strains of H1N1 isolated from patients in Mexico are also swine flu,” Donald Low, an infectious diseases specialist at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, told the Canadian Press.
Canada’s National Microbiology Lab received 51 specimens from Mexico yesterday and will be testing them for a range of pathogens, the public health agency said.
Thirteen fatal cases of severe respiratory illness were reported in Mexico City, four in San Luis Potosi, a city north of the capital, and another in Oaxaca city in the south. Most cases occurred in southern and central Mexico in previously healthy adults aged 25 to 44 years old.
Fever, Headache
Symptoms include high fever, headache, eye pain, shortness of breath and extreme fatigue with rapid progression of symptoms to severe respiratory distress in about five days, the Canadian agency said. A “high proportion” of cases require mechanical respirators, it said.
