By MARK STEVENSON and ANDREW O. SELSKY, Associated Press Writers Mark Stevenson And Andrew O. Selsky, Associated Press Writers – May, 2009
MEXICO CITY – Mexico's top health official said Thursday the number of new swine flu cases is stabilizing in the nation at the epicenter of the outbreak. Health secretary Jose Angel Cordova told a news conference he hoped the trend will continue...
The Mexican health secretary's comments followed similarly hopeful remarks from the mayor of Mexico City, who said statistics indicated "we are entering a period of stabilization."
In Luxembourg, European Union health ministers holding an emergency talks on swine flu agreed to work "without delay" with drugmakers to develop a pilot vaccine to fight the virus.
U.S. scientists are racing to develop the key vaccine ingredient, a strain of the virus engineered to trigger the immune system
Obama urged people to wash their hands, cover their coughs and stay home when they feel sick. Calderon gave similar advice.
Biden and the acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in televised interviews Thursday there would be no practical benefit to closing the U.S.-Mexican border to stop the flu's spread.
The WHO's Phase 5 alert activates added efforts to produce a vaccine. Fukuda said Thursday there was nothing in the past day that would prompt the U.N. body to raise the alert further.
"So, at this time again, I want to repeat there is nothing to us which immunologically suggests today that we should be moving toward phase 6," he told reporters.
Switzerland and the Netherlands became the latest countries to report swine flu infections. In addition to Mexico and the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Britain, Germany, Spain, Israel and Austria have confirmed cases.
The Swiss government said a 19-year-old student with swine flu was mistakenly released from the hospital and then hastily readmitted.
The WHO raised its tally of confirmed swine flu cases around the world to 257 from 148, with most of the new cases from Mexico. The WHO count lags behind what individual countries report.
(out of 6.5 Billion wolrd population)
Swine flu is a mix of pig, bird and human genes to which people have limited natural immunity. It has symptoms nearly identical to regular flu — fever, cough and sore throat — and spreads similarly, through tiny particles in the air, when people cough or sneeze.
About 36,000 people die each year of flu in the United States.
Calderon said authorities would use the five-day partial shutdown in Mexico to consider whether to extend emergency measures or ease some restrictions. The dates include a weekend and two holidays, Labor Day and Cinco de Mayo, minimizing the added disruption.
Obama said his administration has made sure that needed medical supplies are on hand and he praised the Bush administration for stockpiling 50 million doses of antiviral medications.
"The key now is to just make sure we are maintaining great vigilance, that everybody responds appropriately when cases do come up. And individual families start taking very sensible precautions that can make a huge difference," he said.
Several nations have banned travel to or from Mexico, and some countries have urged their citizens to avoid the United States and Canada as well. Health officials said such bans would do little to stop the virus.
Medical detectives have not pinpointed where the outbreak began. Scientists believe that somewhere in the world, months or even a year ago, a pig virus jumped to a human and mutated, and has been spreading between humans ever since.
China has gone on a rhetorical offensive to squash any suggestion it's the source of the swine flu after some Mexican officials suggested it sprang from China or elsewhere in Asia. A Mexican health official has also suggested the virus could have been brought to Mexico from Pakistan or Bangladesh.
By March 9, the first symptoms were showing up in the Mexican state of Veracruz, where pig farming is a key industry in mountain hamlets and where small clinics provide the only local health care.
The earliest confirmed case was a 5-year-old Veracruz boy, one of hundreds of people in the town of La Gloria whose flu symptoms left them struggling to breathe. People from La Gloria kept going to jobs in Mexico City despite their illnesses, and could have infected people there.
Days later, a door-to-door tax inspector was hospitalized with acute respiratory problems in the neighboring state of Oaxaca, infecting 16 hospital workers before she became Mexico's first confirmed death.
Mexico's health care system has become the target of widespread anger and distrust. In case after case, patients have complained of being misdiagnosed, turned away by doctors and denied access to drugs.
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AP writers Frank Jordans in Geneva; Tom Raum and Lauran Neergaard in Washington; Olga Rodriguez in Oaxaca, Mexico; Paul Haven and E. Eduardo Castillo in Mexico City; Mike Stobbe in Atlanta; Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, and Balz Bruppacher in Bern, Switzerland, contributed to this report.
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