WHO set to declare first flu pandemic
The World Health Organization is set to declare H1N1 virus as the first influenza pandemic in more than 40 years, triggering heightened health measures in the WHO’s 193 countries.
Flu experts were expected to recommend moving to the top phase 6 on the organization’s six-point scale. That would reflect the fact that the disease, also known as swine flu, was spreading geographically.
Britain’s Health Protection Agency chairman, David Heymann, said that the virus was tried to contain by countries through measures such as school closure. This procedure has extended the precious time needed to prepare for a full-blown pandemic.
One health source, who declined to be named, said the experts were also expected to recommend finishing production currently under way of seasonal flu vaccine for the northern hemisphere next winter.
Drugmakers have obtained the new influenza A (H1N1) seed virus in the past two weeks, enabling them to begin the production process by growing the virus in eggs.
The strain, which emerged in April in Mexico and the United States, has spread widely in nations including Australia, Britain, Chile, Japan, Philippines and other countries.
In Germany, authorities have confirmed 30 cases of H1N1 at a school in Rhineland city of Duesseldorf, the most concentrated outbreak of the virus so far in Europe’s biggest economy.
According to the WHO’s latest tally of laboratory confirmed cases, there have been 27,737 infections reported in 74 countries to date, including more than 140 deaths, but the real number of people with the disease is likely to run into at least hundreds of thousands, as mild cases may not have been detected.
