The outbreak of a new multi-strain swine flu virus transmitted from human to human that has killed up to 60 people in Mexico and eight in the United States is a “serious situation” with a “pandemic potential,” the head of the World Health Organization said Saturday. “A new virus is responsible” for the cases reported in Mexico and the United States, WHO Director General Margaret Chan said in a telephone press conference, adding: “It is a serious situation which needs to be closely followed.” How the situation will evolve is “unpredictable,” she said, urging other countries to “increase vigilance”. “This virus has clearly a pandemic potential,” she added. A pandemic is an outbreak of a disease over a whole country or the world. In Mexico and the United States, health experts searched on Saturday for signs the outbreak is spreading further. Mexico shut cinemas and museums and axed public events in the sprawling capital to try to prevent further infections. Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova, speaking on the evening television news, encouraged people to avoid crowds and wear face masks, noting there was no guarantee that a vaccine would help against the new strain. The seasonal flu vaccine protects against one strain of the H1N1 virus, which is also circulating, but this new version is genetically different. Experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US are working on a vaccine against the new strain but it would take months to make. Cordova said the death rate appeared to have steadied and hospitals in the past few days had not seen the exponential rise in the number of people infected that many had feared. Genetic analysis shows the flu strain is a never-before-seen mixture of swine, human and avian viruses. The fact that most of the dead were aged between 25 and 45 was seen as a worrying sign linked to pandemics, as seasonal flu tends to be more deadly among the elderly and the very young. More cases could come to light as patients are tested in California, said Dr. Gil Chavez, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases at the California Department of Public Health and the state's chief epidemiologist. “The more we look the more we are likely to find,” he said. In New York City, health officials were investigating what had sickened scores of students who fell ill with flu-like symptoms in a Queens high school on Thursday and Friday. The symptoms were reported as mild. As far away as Hong Kong -- the epicenter of the 2003 SARS epidemic and especially vigilant to any threat of infectious disease -- the government's Center for Health Protection said it was closely monitoring investigations in the US and would analyze flu samples in the territory. Cordova said Mexico had 1 million doses of antiviral medicine, easily enough to treat the cases reported so far. Roche AG's Tamiflu and GlaxoSmithKline's Relenza are both recommended to treat flu. The last flu pandemic was in 1968 when “Hong Kong” flu killed about a million people globally. – AgenciesCommon sense measures GENEVA – Little can be done to prevent an outbreak of flu from spreading, health experts warn, but common sense measures can help people protect themselves. Number one is hand-washing. “Cover your cough or your sneeze, wash your hands frequently,” advised Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US. – ReutersProbable cases also were found at a school in the New York City borough of Queens and experts at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say they fully expect to find more cases. Here is why: • This new strain of influenza has shown it can spread easily from person to person. • It has been found in several places and among people who had no known contact. This suggests there is an unseen chain of infection and that the virus has been spreading quietly. • This can happen because respiratory illnesses are very common and doctors rarely test patients for flu. People could have had the swine virus and never known it. • At least in the United States, it has so far only been found in people who had mild illness, another factor that would have allowed it to spread undetected. • World Health Organization director Dr. Margaret Chan has said the new strain of H1N1 has the potential to become a pandemic strain because it does spread easily and does cause serious disease. • CDC experts note that while it is possible to contain an outbreak of disease that is in one limited area, once it is reported in widespread locations, the spread is impossible to control. __
