The World Health Organization announced on Saturday an increase in the number of confirmed cases of swine flu, but said there was no evidence of sustained community spread outside of North America, which would lead to raising the pandemic alert. “At the present time, I would still propose that a pandemic is imminent because we are seeing transmission to other countries,” Dr. Michael J. Ryan, the director of the World Health Organization global alert and response team, said in a teleconference on Saturday from Geneva. “We have to expect that Phase 6 will be reached. We have to hope that it is not.”
The organization said that 15 countries had reported a total of 615 cases of the infection, officially known as influenza A(H1N1), up from 367 cases late Friday. Dr. Ryan said that several countries in Europe reported additional confirmed cases on Saturday, including France, Germany, Spain, Great Britain, Israel, but he added: “There are a very small number of cases, it is very limited. At this stage it would be unwise to say that those events are out of control.” In the United States, the number of confirmed cases rose to 160 in 21 states, up from 141 cases in 19 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Saturday morning.
But even as Mexico, believed to be the epicenter of the outbreak, found that a little more than half of its suspected cases subjected to detailed tests so far did not actually involve the virus and health officials there believed that the spread of the virus was stabilizing, officials in the United States were more cautious about saying the health risk had decreased. “Apparently the rate of infection is not as widespread as we might have thought,” José Ángel Córdova, Mexico’s health minister, said on Friday.
Of 908 suspected cases that were tested in Mexico, only 397 people turned out to have the virus, Mexican health officials reported on Friday. Of those, 16 people have died. Initially, Mexico had reported as many as 2,500 suspected cases, but the number of actual cases could turn out to be less than half the suspected number if further testing follows the same pattern as the original round. “I am encouraged by what I have heard fromt the reports from Mexico but I want to say that we are remaining vigilant,”
Dr. Anne Schuchat, the C.D.C.’s interim science and public health deputy director, said Saturday in a teleconference. “We have seen times where things appeared to be getting better but they got worse again,” Dr. Schuchat said, referring to the 2003 SARS outbreak in Canada. “In Mexico, we may be holding our breath for some time.” Dr. Javier Torres, the head of the infectious disease research unit at the Mexican Social Security Institute, Mexico’s main public health care system, said that he had been analyzing the past week’s influenza statistics. “The number of those exposed and infected has gone up, and the number of fatal cases has gone down,” he said. “We can be comfortable with those facts.”
Officials at the World Health Organization, declined to comment beyond saying that they would have to investigate details in Mexico further. “I’d be very pleased if this virus turned out to be weaker,” Dr. Ryan said. “These viruses are very unpredictable.” But a public health and infectious disease expert from Vanderbilt University, Dr. William Schaffner, said the test results were “going to change, I think in a substantial way, the image of this outbreak in Mexico.” If the outbreak is much smaller than initially thought, Dr. Schaffner said, “it would, I think, enable the world’s public health community to take a deep breath and continue to track the outbreak and reduce the tendency, as the W.H.O. has been doing, to notch up on its pandemic scale.”
If the testing also shows that the disease has caused fewer deaths than the approximately 170 suspected, he said, it might resolve a question that has been puzzling health experts: why did the disease appear to be so much more severe in Mexico than in the United States? In the United States, cases have been mild and there has been only one death, that of a 21-month-old child from Mexico who had traveled to Texas with his family.
In the United States, the number of hospitalizations as a result of the swine flu has increased to 13, up from 6 in recent days, the C.D.C. said on Saturday. Taking extreme precautions against the spread of the virus, hundreds of schools throughout the country have closed, some for a week or more. For communities that have closed schools in which some children have either exhibited flu-like symptoms or have confirmed cases of the swine flu, the centers recommended that the schools close for 14 days.
The organization said that 15 countries had reported a total of 615 cases of the infection, officially known as influenza A(H1N1), up from 367 cases late Friday. Dr. Ryan said that several countries in Europe reported additional confirmed cases on Saturday, including France, Germany, Spain, Great Britain, Israel, but he added: “There are a very small number of cases, it is very limited. At this stage it would be unwise to say that those events are out of control.” In the United States, the number of confirmed cases rose to 160 in 21 states, up from 141 cases in 19 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Saturday morning.
But even as Mexico, believed to be the epicenter of the outbreak, found that a little more than half of its suspected cases subjected to detailed tests so far did not actually involve the virus and health officials there believed that the spread of the virus was stabilizing, officials in the United States were more cautious about saying the health risk had decreased. “Apparently the rate of infection is not as widespread as we might have thought,” José Ángel Córdova, Mexico’s health minister, said on Friday.
Of 908 suspected cases that were tested in Mexico, only 397 people turned out to have the virus, Mexican health officials reported on Friday. Of those, 16 people have died. Initially, Mexico had reported as many as 2,500 suspected cases, but the number of actual cases could turn out to be less than half the suspected number if further testing follows the same pattern as the original round. “I am encouraged by what I have heard fromt the reports from Mexico but I want to say that we are remaining vigilant,”
Dr. Anne Schuchat, the C.D.C.’s interim science and public health deputy director, said Saturday in a teleconference. “We have seen times where things appeared to be getting better but they got worse again,” Dr. Schuchat said, referring to the 2003 SARS outbreak in Canada. “In Mexico, we may be holding our breath for some time.” Dr. Javier Torres, the head of the infectious disease research unit at the Mexican Social Security Institute, Mexico’s main public health care system, said that he had been analyzing the past week’s influenza statistics. “The number of those exposed and infected has gone up, and the number of fatal cases has gone down,” he said. “We can be comfortable with those facts.”
Officials at the World Health Organization, declined to comment beyond saying that they would have to investigate details in Mexico further. “I’d be very pleased if this virus turned out to be weaker,” Dr. Ryan said. “These viruses are very unpredictable.” But a public health and infectious disease expert from Vanderbilt University, Dr. William Schaffner, said the test results were “going to change, I think in a substantial way, the image of this outbreak in Mexico.” If the outbreak is much smaller than initially thought, Dr. Schaffner said, “it would, I think, enable the world’s public health community to take a deep breath and continue to track the outbreak and reduce the tendency, as the W.H.O. has been doing, to notch up on its pandemic scale.”
If the testing also shows that the disease has caused fewer deaths than the approximately 170 suspected, he said, it might resolve a question that has been puzzling health experts: why did the disease appear to be so much more severe in Mexico than in the United States? In the United States, cases have been mild and there has been only one death, that of a 21-month-old child from Mexico who had traveled to Texas with his family.
In the United States, the number of hospitalizations as a result of the swine flu has increased to 13, up from 6 in recent days, the C.D.C. said on Saturday. Taking extreme precautions against the spread of the virus, hundreds of schools throughout the country have closed, some for a week or more. For communities that have closed schools in which some children have either exhibited flu-like symptoms or have confirmed cases of the swine flu, the centers recommended that the schools close for 14 days.
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