Swine flu fears hit Wimbledon as cases rise

SWINE FLU fears hit the Wimbledon tennis championships yesterday as World Health Organisation (WHO) figures showed global cases leaping past 70,000 while Australian researchers said a vaccine could be ready in months.

With the death toll from the pandemic at 311 and total cases at 70,893, according to the WHO, more countries reported their first A(H1N1) infections and Indonesia planned to ask some people arriving there to wear masks.

The worries at Wimbledon came with play intensifying as the tournament entered its second week. Organisers said some staff members have reported “flu-like” symptoms but the competition would continue as normal.

Ian Ritchie, the chief executive of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, which runs the annual grand slam in south-west London, sent a message to staff to inform them of the situation.

Club sources said a handful of ball boys and ball girls were affected but nobody had been confirmed as having contracted the virus.

More than 4,000 swine flu cases have been diagnosed in Britain, and a hospital said yesterday a nine-year-old girl had become the third Briton to die with the disease.

The girl had underlying health problems and it was unclear whether swine flu had contributed to her death, Birmingham Children’s Hospital said.

According to the WHO figures released yesterday, the US showed the largest increase in cases, bringing the total to 27,717, including 127 deaths – but that count may be massively low.

US health authorities said last Friday that at least one million people in the US have had swine flu, or about 50 times more than the number of cases officially reported.

The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) arrived at its figure based on computer models and surveys of communities known to have been hard hit by the new flu strain.

Some affected countries no longer keep track of all cases, according to the UN health agency, while others do not always report them.

Australian researchers said yesterday a swine flu vaccine could be ready in months as the country reported two more deaths linked to the virus, taking the total to six.

University of Queensland scientists said they had produced the country’s first batch of a vaccine developed in the US using caterpillar cells.

Researcher Anton Middelberg said the company behind the FluBlok vaccine – Protein Sciences Corporation – planned to run clinical human trials in the US, Mexico and Australia.