GENEVA -- The World Health Organization has told its member nations it is declaring an H1N1 flu pandemic -- the first in 41 years.
The move came Thursday as infections climbed in the United States, Europe, Australia, South America and elsewhere.
[Masked girls] Getty Images
A masked girl sits with a classmate at a kindergarten in a residential estate in Hong Kong, which ordered all primary schools in the city to be closed for two weeks after a cluster of local H1N1 flu cases was found.
In a statement sent to member countries, WHO says it decided to raise the pandemic alert level from phase 5 to 6, meaning that a global outbreak of H1N1 has begun. The decision was made after the U.N. health agency held an emergency meeting on the flu with its experts. The last flu pandemic was in 1968.
"At this early stage, the pandemic can be characterized globally as being moderate in severity,'' WHO said in the statement, urging nations not to close borders or restrict travel and trade. "(We) remain in close dialogue with influenza vaccine manufacturers.''
The pandemic declaration will require all countries, including the dozens that haven't yet reported any cases, to launch pandemic-prevention plans.
Peter Cordingley, a spokesman for the WHO based in Manila, noted that the term pandemic was "a measure of the spread of the virus, not the severity of the virus." The virus's effects are moderate at the moment, he noted. "But it's still going to infect an awful lot of people."
On Wednesday, WHO said 74 countries had reported nearly 27,737 cases of H1N1, including 141 deaths. About half the world's confirmed cases, or 13,217, are in the U.S., including 27 deaths, according to the WHO.
In Australia, the number of the new disease, also known as swine flu, has more than tripled in the past week, reaching 1,263 on Thursday, when three new cases were confirmed in the state of Tasmania. It recorded its first case of the disease on May 9.
"Australia catches our eye particularly not because of the number of cases but because of strong evidence of community transmission," particularly in the southern state of Victoria and its capital, Melbourne, said Mr. Cordingley. He said the WHO is also focusing on similar evidence in the U.K., Spain, Japan and Chile.
More than 1,000 Australia's swine flu cases are in Victoria, which has been hit by the cold temperatures and dry conditions that flu viruses thrive in.
Victorians now account for around 3.6% of total confirmed cases globally, and authorities are struggling to understand exactly why the virus has taken such a hold in the state, Victoria's acting chief health officer, Rosemary Lester, said Thursday.
"Perhaps we may never have a definitive answer on that," Lester told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. "We do know that we have had an extensive testing regime so we have uncovered a lot of cases that were there to be uncovered. And because the disease is so mild in the majority of people, that allowed it to spread undetected," she said.
Cases detected so far have been relatively mild, with no deaths from the virus yet recorded in the country. The majority of sufferers in Australia have been aged between five and 18, but the virus continues to strike healthy adults including several professional Rugby League players who competed in an interstate match in Victoria's capital, Melbourne, last week.
Those players were quarantined from their clubs, and earlier this week, authorities canceled a major swim meet due to be held in Melbourne. Victoria is on a higher level of alert than other Australian states.
On the streets of Melbourne there is little evidence of major concern among the city's nearly four million residents. Shops, bars and cafes -- while affected by the economic slowdown -- are still busy, and the city's public transport has shown no signs of reduced patronage.
Schools in the nation are no longer being closed if a student is reported as having the virus, although authorities have requested that school aged children at risk from the virus stay home for seven days.
In contrast, Hong Kong's government on Thursday ordered the closure of all nurseries, kindergartens and primary schools for two weeks after a dozen students at one school tested positive for swine flu.
Australian health authorities have stopped testing every suspected case of the virus -- drawing some condemnation from critics -- and Victoria is now focusing treatment on those most vulnerable to viral infections, such as the very old or very young.
New York City health officials say three more people have died from swine flu, bringing the city's total to 15. One victim was a child under the age of 5, one was a person between 5 to 24 years old, and another was between 30 to 39 years old.
The city health department says a telephone poll of over 1,000 residents found nearly 7% had flu-like symptoms in April and May. That suggests more than half a million New Yorkers were ill.
—Lyndal McFarland in Melbourne, Peter Stein in Hong Kong and the Associated Press contributed to this article.
Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
online.wsj.com |
