WHO Says H1N1 Could Infect Two Billion Worldwide
The World Health Organization says as many as two billion people could be infected by the new H1N1 virus, if the current outbreak continues to spread.
WHO flu chief Keiji Fukuda made the comment Thursday at the daily WHO news conference in Geneva, not as a prediction, but as an observation about flu pandemics.
In previous pandemics, Fukuda said, one-third of the world’s population gets infected. So with a world population of six billion people, it’s “reasonable” to expect two billion infections, he said.
That doesn’t mean any pandemic that might be declared of this virus would be severe and cause as many deaths as the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, which killed about 70 million people.
It may be more like the the last flu pandemic, the Hong Kong Flu in 1968, which was considered mild by pandemic terms. Only about one million people globally died of that flu, caused by a new strain of H3N2. That compares to the estimated 500,000 people who die around the world every year from seasonal flu.
Fukuda said it is impossible at this point to say whether a H1N1 pandemic would be mild or severe.
Last week, the WHO raised its flu pandemic alert to Phase 5, one step short of a pandemic. On Thursday, Fukuda said the H1N1 virus is not yet spreading in a sustained way outside North America, so the pandemic level will remain at 5.
“We remain at Phase 5. That is not changed,” Fukuda told reporters.
Swine Flu Cases Spread
Swine Flu Update: The United States has activated an emergency plan to combat swine flu as the Obama administration announced measures Sunday to contain the sometimes deadly virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified the strain of swine flu and is prepared to distribute a quarter of the U.S. stockpile of 50 million doses of anti-viral medications in places around the country where swine flu has been located or may be expected to spread, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a briefing at the White House.
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Original Story
A potentially deadly new strain of the swine flu virus cropped up in more places in the United States and Mexico on Saturday, in what the World Health Organization called “a public health emergency of international concern.”
The most recent reports Saturday afternoon were of two confirmed cases of the virus in Kansas — bringing the number of confirmed U.S. cases to 11.
Those joined nine confirmed cases in Texas and California and an apparent outbreak at a private school in New York City, where officials say eight children likely have the virus.
By Saturday night, health officials in Mexico said 81 deaths there were “likely linked” to the swine flu.
Dr. Jose A. Cordova Villalobos, Mexico’s Secretary of Health, said viral testing has confirmed 20 cases of swine flu across the country.
President Felipe Calderon on Saturday issued an executive decree detailing emergency powers of the Ministry of Health, according to the president’s office.
The order gives the ministry with the authority to isolate sick patients, inspect travelers’ luggage and their vehicles and conduct house inspections, the statement said.
The government also has the authority to prevent public gatherings, shut down public venues and regulate air, sea and overland travel.
The WHO’s Gregory Hartl said the strain of the virus seen in Mexico is worrisome because it has mutated from older strains.
Swine Flu – US Very Concerned Over Outbreak
US medical authorities expressed strong concern Friday about an unprecedented multi-strain swine flu outbreak that has killed at least 60 people in Mexico and infected seven people in the United States.
“It’s very obvious that we are very concerned. We’ve stood up emergency operation centers,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spokesman Dave Daigle told AFP.
One major source of concern was that the virus included strains from different types of flu.
“This is the first time that we’ve seen an avian strain, two swine strains and a human strain,” said Daigle, adding that the virus had influenza strains from European and Asian swine, but not from North American swine.
In 11 of 12 reported human cases of swine influenza (H1N1) virus infection in the United States from December 2005 to February 2009, the CDC has documented direct or indirect contact with swine.
But the seven known cases of the previously undetected strain in the United States — five from California and two from Texas — did not have contact with pigs. The seven people infected have all recovered from the flu.
“We have determined that this virus is contagious and is spreading from human to human,” the CDC said on its website. “However, at this time, we have not determined how easily the virus spreads between people.”
Local and state health officials were interviewing not just the people who were infected but the people with whom they had contact, Daigle noted.
Officials were looking for the source of the infection, Daigle said, adding that US health officials were due to receive samples from Mexico that would be tested at a lab at the centers based in Atlanta, Georgia.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified swine influenza as a potential source of a human flu pandemic. Pandemics usually occur every 20 years.
“Our experts and others are saying are not saying it’s not a matter of whether but when. And we are past due,” said Daigle.
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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.
