The World Health Organization (WHO) is looking into reports in Britain of the likely spread of a drug-resistant strain of swine flu, the UN agency said Tuesday. Britain's Health Protection Agency said five cases have been confirmed in Wales of patients infected with H1N1 resistant to oseltamivir - the generic name of Roche and Gilead Sciences Inc's antiviral drug Tamiflu. “We have seen the reports, we need to look into them,” WHO spokesman Thomas Abraham said in Geneva. The World Health Organization has previously reported cases of the pandemic virus being resistant to oseltamivir but says these are rare. The WHO said it was still probing whether a mutation in the H1N1 influenza strain, detected most recently in Norway last week, is causing the severest symptoms among those infected. The Norwegian Institute of Public Health said last Friday the mutation could affect the virus' ability to go deeper into the respiratory system, causing more serious illness. The World Health Organization also awaited further details from Canadian health officials after some Canadian provinces stopped using a particular batch of the H1N1 flu vaccine after six people experienced severe allergic reactions. The Public Health Agency of Canada and drug maker GlaxoSmithKline Plc said Monday they had asked nearly half of the country's 13 provinces and territories to stop using a batch of 172,000 doses.
