【彭博社】Flu virus spreads to more countries, fuels hunt for vaccine

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Flu virus spreads to more countries, fuels hunt for vaccine
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Flu-virus-spreads-to-more-countries/articleshow/4473961.cms
2 May 2009, 0210 hrs IST, Bloomberg

NEW YORK:Flu reached 12 countries, as governments closed schools, planned for vaccine production and tapped emergency stockpiles of antiviral medicine.

Genetic tests have confirmed more than 331 people have the strain originally labeled swine flu, according to the World Health Organization’s Web site. Hundreds more cases are suspected in New York, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand. The WHO said thousands of samples from sick patients are backlogged for testing, and disease trackers are looking at whether an outbreak in Spain should trigger a declaration of a pandemic.

The Geneva-based health agency raised its six-tier alert to 5 on April 29 and said a move to the next and final level, for the world’s first influenza pandemic since 1968, may soon be made. The WHO urged countries to make final preparations against a disease that may sweep across the globe, preying on a world population that has no natural immunity to the new virus.

“What the public health community can and must do is provide the very best information,” Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis, said in a telephone interview. “We make general guideline recommendations, but it’s all local leaders who decide.”

Fort Worth, Texas, closed 144 public schools with 80,000 students after one child came down with flu. Citigroup Inc disinfected a New York office building when a worker became ill, and as many as 400,000 pigs are being slaughtered in Egypt.

The flu infections in people aren’t related to exposure to pigs, and properly prepared pork is safe to eat, said Keiji Fukuda, WHO assistant director-general for health security and environment.

As the number of people sick with flu continued to rise, an outbreak in Spain may show the virus is establishing itself beyond Mexico and the US, approaching the WHO’s definition of a pandemic. The agency needs evidence of sustained human-to- human transmission outside North America to declare the outbreak a pandemic.

Spain confirmed 13 cases, including one person who hadn’t been to Mexico. The WHO raised the alert to level 5 after swine flu took root in New York. It was the second elevation this week.

A phase 5 warning is “a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent” with little time left for preparation, according to the Web site of the WHO, an agency of the United Nations.