Global pandemic fears as swine flu death toll hits 81
While the only deaths have been in Mexico, the flu is spreading, with 20 cases in the United States, which declared a public health emergency yesterday, and six in Canada, and possible cases as far afield as Spain and France and New Zealand.
US homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano said the declaration of the public health emergency was necessary to free up federal, state and local agencies’ resources and authorise the release of funds to buy more antivirals. “This is standard operating procedure,” Napolitano stressed, adding that similar declarations had been issued in the past to help states cope with flooding or to help them prepare for approaching hurricanes.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon said most of the roughly 1,300 people in Mexico suspected of having this new strain of swine flu have been given a clean bill of health. He said more than 900 people had been declared healthy. Nearly 400 were being checked.
New York mayor Michael Bloomberg confirmed eight schoolchildren there had caught the swine flu virus, although the cases were mild and the illness did not appear to be spreading rapidly to the general population.
Twelve cases have been confirmed in California, Kansas, Texas and Ohio.
Canada confirmed its first infections at opposite ends of the country, with two in the western province of British Columbia and four in the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia.
Dr Robert Strang, chief public health officer for Nova Scotia, said those in his province were mild, adding: “It was acquired in Mexico, brought home and spread.”
In New Zealand, 10 students from a school party that had been in Mexico were being tested after showing symptoms.
The World Health Organisation has declared the flu a “public health emergency of international concern” that could become a pandemic, or global outbreak of serious disease. A pandemic would deal a major blow to a world economy suffering its worst recession in decades, and experts say it could cost trillions of dollars.
Mexico City, one of the world’s biggest cities, practically ground to a halt yesterday with restaurants, cinemas and churches shut and millions staying at home. Worshipers were told to follow Sunday church services on television and some residents abandoned the rambling, chaotic city of some 20 million people.
Student Michelle Geronis, 22, took a bus to her family in the central state of Aguascalientes. “My parents heard the news and said, ‘You know what? You’d better get here,’” she said.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised Americans to see a doctor if they had good reason to suspect swine flu.
Officials also said they would release a quarter of the US stockpile of the antiviral drugs Tamiflu and Relenza. Both have been shown to be effective against the new swine flu.
Flu is characterised by a sudden fever, muscle aches, sore throat and dry cough. Victims of the new strain have also suffered more vomiting and diarrhoea than is usual with flu.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the US government is following developments on the swine flu closely and would update the public regularly.
In Spain, doctors checked three people returned from visiting Mexico and reported flu-like symptoms.
The flu strain, a mixture of four different swine, bird and human viruses, poses the biggest risk of a large-scale pandemic since avian flu surfaced in 1997, killing several hundred people.
WHO director-general Dr Margaret Chan urged greater worldwide surveillance. Authorities across Asia, who have grappled with bird flu and SARS in recent years, snapped into action, screening travellers at border checkpoints in Hong Kong, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan. “Countries are encouraged to do anything that they feel would be a precautionary measure,” said a WHO spokeswoman. “All countries need to enhance their monitoring."
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