Mexico Flu Deaths Raise Worries Of Global Epidemic

[Mai Krap]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/articl...zMM_EQD97P008G2

Mexico flu deaths raise worries of global epidemic

By MARK STEVENSON – 12 minutes ago

MEXICO CITY (AP) — At least 16 people — and possibly dozens more — have died from a swine flu virus in Mexico, and world health officials worry it could unleash a global flu epidemic. Mexico City closed schools across the metropolis Friday in hopes of containing the outbreak, and tougher measures were being considered.

Scientists were trying to determine if the deaths involved the same new strain of swine flu that sickened seven people in Texas and California — a disturbing disease that combines pig, bird and human viruses in a way that researchers have not seen before.

The World Health Organization counted at least 57 deaths in Mexico, but said it wasn't yet clear what flu they died from.

"We are very, very concerned," WHO spokesman Thomas Abraham said. "We have what appears to be a novel virus and it has spread from human to human."

WHO raised its internal alert system Friday, enabling the agency to divert more money and personnel to dealing with the outbreak. "It's all hands on deck at the moment." Abraham said.

President Felipe Calderon cancelled a trip and met with his Cabinet to coordinate Mexico's response. The government has 500,000 flu vaccines and planned to administer them to health workers, the highest risk group.

There are no vaccines available for the general public in Mexico, and authorities urged people to avoid hospitals unless they had a medical emergency, since hospitals are centers of infection. They also said Mexicans should refrain from customary greetings such as shaking hands or kissing cheeks.

But the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Americans need not avoid traveling to Mexico, as long as they take the usual precautions, such as frequent handwashing.

Mexico's Health Secretary, Jose Cordova, said only 16 of the deaths have been confirmed as the new swine flu strain, and that government laboratories were testing samples from 44 other people who died. At least 943 nationwide were sick from the suspected flu, the health department said.

Cordova said samples also were sent to the CDC to look for matches with the virus that infected seven people in Texas and California.

Cordova called it a "new, different strain ... that originally came from pigs."

Epidemiologists are particularly concerned because the only people killed so far were normally less-vulnerable young people and adults. It's possible that more vulnerable populations — infants and the aged — had been vaccinated against other strains, and that those vaccines may be providing some protection.

"We certainly have 60 deaths that we can't be sure are from the same virus, but it is probable," Cordova told MVS radio in Mexico City.

Dr. Anne Schuchat of the CDC said "at this point, we do not have any confirmations of swine influenza in Mexico" of the kind that sickened seven California and Texas residents. All seven recovered from symptoms that were like those of the regular flu, mostly involving fever, cough and sore throat, though some of the seven also experienced vomiting and diarrhea.

Scientists have long been concerned that a new flu virus could launch a pandemic, a worldwide spread of a killer disease. A new virus could evolve when different flu viruses infect a pig, a person or a bird, mingling their genetic material. The resulting hybrid could spread quickly because people would have no natural defenses against it.

The most notorious flu pandemic is thought to have killed at least 40 million people worldwide in 1918-19. Two other, less deadly flu pandemics struck in 1957 and 1968.

Nobody can predict when pandemics will happen. Scientists had been concerned about swine flu in 1976, for example, and some 40 million Americans were vaccinated. No flu pandemic ever appeared, but thousands of vaccinated people filed claims saying they'd suffered a paralyzing condition andother side effects from the shots.

In recent years, scientists have been particularly concerned about birds. There have been deaths from bird flu, mostly in Asia, but the virus has so far been unable to spread from person to person easily enough to touch off a pandemic.

Closing the schools across the metropolis of 20 million kept 6.1 million students home from day care centers through high schools, and thousands more were affected as colleges and universities closed down. Parents scrambled to juggle work and family concerns due to what local media said was the first citywide schools closure since Mexico City's devastating 1985 earthquake.

Authorities also advised capital residents not to go to work if they felt ill, and to wear surgical masks if they had to move through crowds. A wider shutdown — perhaps including shutting down government offices — was being considered.

"It is very likely that classes will be suspended for several days," Cordova said. "We will have to evaluate, and let's hope this doesn't happen, the need to restrict activity at workplaces."

Mexico's initial response in its overcrowded capital brought to mind other major outbreaks — such as when SARS hit Asia. At its peak in 2003, Beijing was the hardest-hit city in the world. Schools, cinemas and restaurants were shuttered to prevent the spread the deadly respiratory virus, and thousands of people were quarantined at home.

In March 2008, Hong Kong ordered more than a half million young students to stay home for two weeks because of a flu outbreak. It was the first such closure in Hong Kong since the outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.

Lillian Molina and other teachers at the Montessori's World preschool scrubbed down their empty classrooms with Clorox, soap and Lysol on Friday between fielding calls from worried parents. While the school has had no known cases among its students, Molina supported the government's decision to shutter classes, especially in preschools.

"It's great they are taking precautions," she said. "I think it's a really good idea."

Still, U.S. health officials said it's not yet a reason for alarm in the United States. The five in California and two in Texas have all recovered, and testing indicates some common antiviral medications seem to work against the virus.

Schuchat of the CDC said officials believe the new strain can spread human-to-human, which is unusual for a swine flu virus. The CDC is checking people who have been in contact with the seven confirmed U.S. cases, who all became ill between late March and mid-April.

The U.S. cases are a growing medical mystery because it's unclear how they caught the virus. The CDC said none of the seven people were in contact with pigs, which is how people usually catch swine flu. And only a few were in contact with each other.

CDC officials described the virus as having a unique combination of gene segments not seen in people or pigs before. The bug contains human virus, avian virus from North America and pig viruses from North America, Europe and Asia.

Health officials have seen mixes of bird, pig and human virus before, but never such an intercontinental combination with more than one pig virus in the mix.

Scientists keep a close eye on flu viruses that emerge from pigs. The animals are considered particularly susceptible to both avian and human viruses and a likely place where the kind of genetic reassortment can take place that might lead to a new form of pandemic flu, said Dr. John Treanor, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

The virus may be something completely new, or it may have been around for a while but was only detected now because of improved lab testing and disease surveillance, CDC officials said.

The virus was first detected in two children in southern California — a 10-year-old boy in San Diego County and a 9-year-old girl in neighboring Imperial County.

It's not known if the seasonal flu vaccine Americans got this winter protects against this type of virus. People should wash their hands and take other customary precautions, CDC officials said.

Associated Press Writers Maria Cheng in London, Traci Carl in Mexico City and Mike Stobbe in Atlanta, Georgia, contributed to this report.

[Mai Krap]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/artic...0dzkNynGPxEVeGw

Obama fully briefed on swine flu: aide

WASHINGTON (AFP) — President Barack Obama is being fully briefed on an outbreak of deadly swine flu blamed for scores of deaths in Mexico and seven infections in Texas, an aide said Friday.

"The White House is taking the situation seriously and monitoring for any new developments. The president has been fully briefed," said Reid Cherlin, a White House spokesman.

The World Health Organization in Geneva said 60 people had died from suspected swine flu in Mexico, and Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said officials were probing 45 deaths and 943 possible infections.

The virus mutated from pigs and was transmitted to some humans, raising fears it could evolve into a pandemic type virus.

US medical authorities earlier expressed strong concern as seven known cases were reported in the southern United States, and underlined that the virus included strains from different types of flu.

[Mai Krap]

http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/stories/2009...25/1245aaa62d65

WHO calls emergency meeting on flu outbreak

25 April 2009

The World Health Organisation is convening an emergency committee to advise on whether a new strain of influenza in Mexico and the United States constitutes an international public health threat.

Sixty people have died in Mexico and hundreds of others have fallen ill, mostly in and around the capital, Mexico City.

The flu is believed to have mutated from pigs and then been transmitted to humans.

People in California and Texas have contracted the virus, but no-one in the United States has died from it so far. The White House says it is monitoring the situation closely.

WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl says that 12 of 18 samples taken from victims in Mexico showed the virus had a genetic structure identical to that of a swine flu virus found in California.

However the said more epidemiological information is needed before any change to the organisation's pandemic alert level, currently at 3 on a scale of 1 to 6.

[Mai Krap]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...refer=worldwide

Swine Flu, Mexico Lung Illness Heighten Pandemic Risk (Update2)

By Jason Gale and Tom Randall

April 24 (Bloomberg) -- Disease trackers are asking U.S. hospitals to help follow a new strain of swine flu and are trying to determine whether it’s related to hundreds of illnesses and 57 deaths in Mexico.

A previously unseen variant of H1N1 swine influenza has sickened at least seven people in California and Texas, the Atlanta-based U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday. The World Health Organization said 57 people died among more than 800 in the Mexico City region who developed flu-like symptoms in the past month.

Global health experts are studying whether the U.S. and Mexico illnesses pose a threat of pandemic, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. U.S. hospitals today were asked to collect samples from patients with flu-like symptoms, said William Schaffner, a flu expert at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee.

“This has a sense of urgency about it,” Schaffner, chief of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt, said in a telephone interview today. “They are asking us who work in hospitals to go to our emergency rooms and our pediatric wards to gather specimens and start testing them.”

Investigators haven’t found a link between the California and Texas cases, indicating the virus may be circulating elsewhere, Schaffner said. CDC disease experts will continue investigating whether the outbreaks have a common source, he said. The agency also will host a conference call today with experts, he said.

Threat of Pandemic

Flu can spread quickly when a new strain emerges, because no one has natural immunity. The so-called 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, which may have killed as many as 50 million people, began when an avian flu virus jumped to people, experts said.

“We are taking this very seriously,” Gregory Hartl, spokesman for WHO, the Geneva-based United Nations agency, said in a telephone interview today. “We have to get laboratory confirmation of what it is. We need to know how widespread it is.” The Mexico illnesses are affecting “otherwise healthy adults,” Hartl said.

Pandemic Potential

“The infection of humans with a novel influenza-A virus infection of animal origins, as has happened here, is of concern because of the risk, albeit small, that this could represent the appearance of viruses with pandemic potential,” the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, based in Stockholm, said in a statement.

There’s no evidence a pandemic strain is evolving in the U.S., the European agency said. The CDC reached the same conclusion.

“We don’t think this is a time for major concern,” Anne Schuchat, CDC’s director of respiratory diseases, told reporters on a conference call yesterday.

Authorities in Mexico asked the Public Health Agency of Canada to help identify what’s causing the lung infection that has also spread to five health-care workers, the Ottawa-based agency said in an e-mail yesterday. Mexico Health Minister Jose Cordova canceled classes in Mexico City today and recommended citizens avoid public places.

Canada’s National Microbiology Lab received 51 specimens from Mexico on April 22 and will test them for pathogens. Tests in Mexico found patients had the H1N1 and type-B influenza strains and the parainfluenza virus, the agency said.

Pigs Susceptible

Three main human flu strains -- H3N2, H1N1 and type-B -- cause 250,000 to 500,000 deaths a year globally, according to the World Health Organization, a United Nations agency. Pigs also are susceptible to flu, including the H1N1 subtype.

“It will be critical to determine whether 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.

The CDC is discussing its cases and viruses with Mexico and the Pan American Health Organization, Schuchat said.

“At this point, we do not have any confirmation of swine influenza in Mexico,” Schuchat said.

Symptoms of the illnesses in Mexico 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 respiration, it said.

U.S. Sickness

The four males and three females in San Diego County and Imperial County, California, and in San Antonio, diagnosed with swine flu had mild flu-like symptoms. The patients, 9 to 54 years old, included a father-daughter pair and two boys attending the same Texas school.

The virus is contagious and spreading from human to human, the CDC said in a statement on its Web site. The patients began feeling sick from March 28 to April 19. All have recovered and only one was hospitalized, according to the CDC. None had direct contact with pigs.

“That’s unusual,” Schuchat said. “We don’t know yet how widely it’s spreading and we certainly don’t know the extent of the problem.”

As precaution, CDC is preparing the virus as a vaccine seed strain that could be used to make immunizations, she said.

The swine flu virus contains four different gene segments representing both North American swine and avian influenza, human flu and a Eurasian swine flu, CDC said.

Not Seen Before

“We haven’t seen this strain before, but we haven’t been looking as intensively as we are these days,” Schuchat said. “It’s very possible that this is something new that hasn’t been happening before.”

Swine influenza is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type-A influenza that regularly causes outbreaks among the animals, according to the CDC. Swine flu doesn’t normally infect people, though human infections do occur and cases of human-to- human spread of swine flu viruses have been documented.

Infection in pigs is regarded as especially problematic because of the risk of “reassortment” to produce a new virus, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said.

“These mild U.S. cases infected with a novel influenza are not reflecting the emergence of a pandemic strain, but they at least raise the possibility that there has been limited human- to-human transmission,” the health agency said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jason Gale in Singapore at [email protected]; Tom Randall in New York at [email protected].

[Mai Krap]

http://www.drudgereport.com/

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CN...;show_article=1

US 'very concerned' about swine flu 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.

Swine flu is caused by type A influenza and does not normally infect humans but cases have been reported among people, especially those exposed to pigs, the CDC said. Most outbreaks take place during the late fall and winter months.

Swine flu symptoms include fever, lethargy, lack of appetite and coughing. Some people who have contracted the virus have also reported runny nose, sore throat, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, according to the CDC.

Human outbreaks of H1N1 swine influenza virus were recorded in the United States in 1976 and 1988, when two deaths were reported, and in 1986. In 1988, a pregnant woman died after contact with sick pigs, the WHO said.

In recent years, the global focus for a pandemic has shifted to the H5N1 bird flu virus, which has spread from poultry to humans, especially in Asia.

[sriracha john]

5 long articles and still no mention of Thailand in any of them.

[thunder30101]

Im getting worried myself as I used to have a girlfriend that called me a pig,will I need to get vaccinated soon ?

[Carib]

What has this got to do with Thailand? Or is it the slow season.

[Scott]

A new strain of flu and a possible pandemic certainly are related to Thailand. But if that doesn't satisfy some sceptics lets make it interesting.

Suppose someone with a Nicaraguan passport met some of his 'followers' in Mexico and they then came back to Thailand and staged a rally in Bangkok at the Royal Plaza--meanwhile passing on a flu virus. They are then attacked by the military and police, with some put in jail and the rest return to their villages. Is that Thailand related enough!

And maybe someone can blame the whole thing on Thaksin as well.

[sbk]

Covered here in Health

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